Ten Things I Hate About Entourage

[Owen Linzmayer]

Hi,

I'm the author of an InformIT article entitled "Ten Things I Hate About
Entourage," that I wrote last month with the input of many people from this
newsgroup. As promised, here's the URL for the article:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=434846

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this article, both in this
newsgroup and as a comment on the InformIT site.

 

[Alan Schaevitz]

Hi,

I'm the author of an InformIT article entitled "Ten Things I Hate About
Entourage," that I wrote last month with the input of many people from this
newsgroup. As promised, here's the URL for the article:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=434846

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this article, both in this
newsgroup and as a comment on the InformIT site.

You left out the terrible address book printing options and controls (or
lack thereof, more accurately).

 

[rkanes]

You left out the terrible address book printing options and controls (or
lack thereof, more accurately).

To second that thought, here's a few observations from another thread on
this same topic:

Yes, there are some options in Entourage's Printing dialog, but for sheer

 

[aRKay]

I'm the author of an InformIT article entitled "Ten Things I Hate About
Entourage," that I wrote last month with the input of many people from this
newsgroup. As promised, here's the URL for the article:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=434846

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this article, both in this
newsgroup and as a comment on the InformIT site.

I would like to add two items that were not on the list:

1. Need to have larger box to type in addresses. The font too small and
there is no user option to increase the font size.

2. Add a user option to ditch the Conversion thing in forwarded messages.

 

[Don Edmonds]

Hi,

I'm the author of an InformIT article entitled "Ten Things I Hate About
Entourage," that I wrote last month with the input of many people from this
newsgroup. As promised, here's the URL for the article:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=434846

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this article, both in this
newsgroup and as a comment on the InformIT site.

Hi Owen

Interesting article.

I have a couple more.. - I wouldn't call them hates - but like the tenor of
your article - given the wonderful things that the programme CAN do I wonder
why it is so cranky at some things.

Maybe you do not use "Projects" and/or do not link e-mails or notes (or
anything else) to "Tasks".

Seemed like a great idea to me except when I found that when you try to link
to an existing task you get all the tasks - and cannot sort them by project
(you can only sort them by one of title - due date - or category - you can't
even filter out the completed tasks - and as you say - no "secondary"
sorting) - turns out to be impossible to use efficiently.

And another one that I have mentioned before..

To me a BASIC thing a user needs to be able to do to plan his/her work is to
order their tasks (I would do it at the start of each day) - yet it can't be
done - this applies within Entourage AND in Office Notifications - another
GREAT idea IF ONLY I could move (drag!) the most important item to the top
and so on.

I have to reduce myself to copying the tasks for the day on to a whiteboard
so that I can arrange my workflow - but surely I should be able to do this
within a programme such as Entourage?

I seem to remember in the distant past - on a PC version - I could get
around this because there was something called "Views" which allowed the
user to sort by more than one column in order - something that you
commented on in your article - it was still clumsy - I still had to
artificially arrange my tasks using an alphabetical order code - in these
days of "drag and drop"!

Still - I will be keeping on using the many other great features!

--
Don Edmonds
7 Rankin Street
Kaikohe
New Zealand
64-9-4053030
64-27-2568290

 

[aRKay]

I think the word hate is a little strong. If you really hate it, trash
it and use Apple's Mail application. There are two things I would like
to added or changed to make a good program even better:

1. A user preference for type in "To" box. The font is just too small
for my eyes.

2. A user preference to ditch the dumb Conversion thing when you
forward a message.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year

aRKay

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

I think the word hate is a little strong. If you really hate it, trash
it and use Apple's Mail application. There are two things I would like
to added or changed to make a good program even better:

1. A user preference for type in "To" box. The font is just too small
for my eyes.

Ah, that needs an upgrade to 'Eyes v2' - I can't help you with that one! ;-)

2. A user preference to ditch the dumb Conversion thing when you
forward a message.

I presume by that you mean the reversion of complex HTML to simple HTML?
That would need a major upgrade to Entourage's text editing capabilities - a
standard 'forward message' means that Entourage has to be able to edit the
message, so the complex HTML is reduced to the attributes the text editing
engine can handle. To get round this, use 'forward as attachment', where the
original message is attached to a new, blank message. You can add your own
comments to the new message, and the original message is attached with all
it's formatting retained.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year

And to you

 

[aRKay]

2. A user preference to ditch the dumb Conversion thing when you
forward a message.

I presume by that you mean the reversion of complex HTML to simple HTML?
That would need a major upgrade to Entourage's text editing capabilities - a
standard 'forward message' means that Entourage has to be able to edit the
message, so the complex HTML is reduced to the attributes the text editing
engine can handle. To get round this, use 'forward as attachment', where the
original message is attached to a new, blank message. You can add your own
comments to the new message, and the original message is attached with all
it's formatting retained.[/QUOTE]

Barry,

The following is an example of what I was talking about when forwarding
a text message.

========================
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:23:28 -0600
To: ham-mac <[email protected]>
Conversation: Junk Posting -Disregard
Subject: [Ham-Mac] Junk Posting -Disregard
=========================

Note where Entourage adds the Conversion before the subject. Several
people have asked me why I have "Conversion:" thing in my header. The
only way I know to get rig of it is to manually delete the text.

I would like a user preference to be able to turn off the conversion.

aRKay

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

I presume by that you mean the reversion of complex HTML to simple HTML?
That would need a major upgrade to Entourage's text editing capabilities - a
standard 'forward message' means that Entourage has to be able to edit the
message, so the complex HTML is reduced to the attributes the text editing
engine can handle. To get round this, use 'forward as attachment', where the
original message is attached to a new, blank message. You can add your own
comments to the new message, and the original message is attached with all
it's formatting retained.

Barry,

The following is an example of what I was talking about when forwarding
a text message.

========================
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:23:28 -0600
To: ham-mac <[email protected]>
Conversation: Junk Posting -Disregard
Subject: [Ham-Mac] Junk Posting -Disregard
=========================

Note where Entourage adds the Conversion before the subject. Several
people have asked me why I have "Conversion:" thing in my header. The
only way I know to get rig of it is to manually delete the text.

I would like a user preference to be able to turn off the conversion.

aRKay[/QUOTE]

Ah, ConverSATION, not conversion.

Yes, conversation headers were added in SP2, but do appear in unexpected
places (like when you print an email).

I too would like a way to turn it off.

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

I agree, that's one of my pet peeves, but I was limited to only 10 things.

I used to use Dynodex for my contact management, and it had the absolute
best options for printing the address book (plus it was MUCH faster than
Entourage in sorting and finding).

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

I would like to add two items that were not on the list:

1. Need to have larger box to type in addresses. The font too small and
there is no user option to increase the font size.

Good idea. I recently had LASIK eye surgery and that made me think a lot
more about all the UI elements that become hard to read as people age and
their eyesight becomes worse. This is a great example.

2. Add a user option to ditch the Conversion thing in forwarded messages.

I'm not sure I know what the "Conversion thing" is. Care to explain?

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

I think the word hate is a little strong. If you really hate it, trash
it and use Apple's Mail application. There are two things I would like
to added or changed to make a good program even better:

The title of the article is a play on the movie, "10 Things I Hate About
You." I don't hate Entourage, but I do hate certain things about the
program.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

The title of the article is a play on the movie, "10 Things I Hate About
You." I don't hate Entourage, but I do hate certain things about the
program.

I think you hit the spot with your article.

I commented on it in my blog:
<http://homepage.mac.com/barryw/weblog/weblog.html>

 

[aRKay]

2. Add a user option to ditch the Conversion thing in forwarded messages.

I'm not sure I know what the "Conversion thing" is. Care to explain?[/QUOTE]

The following is an example of what I was talking about when forwarding
a text message.

=======
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:23:28 -0600
To: ham-mac <[email protected]>
Conversation: Junk Posting -Disregard
Subject: [Ham-Mac] Junk Posting -Disregard
=======

Note where Entourage adds the Conversion before the subject. Several
people have asked me why I have "Conversion:" thing in my header. The
only way I know to get rig of it is to manually delete the text.

I would like a user preference to be able to turn off the conversion.

I hope this clarifies the Conversion thing.

aRKay

 

[Fonnesbeck, Chris]

Hi,

I'm the author of an InformIT article entitled "Ten Things I Hate About
Entourage," that I wrote last month with the input of many people from this
newsgroup. As promised, here's the URL for the article:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=434846

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts on this article, both in this
newsgroup and as a comment on the InformIT site.

The bad spam filter should be at the top of the list; the Entourage filter
catches almost nothing because of its lack of learning. I had to go out and
buy spamsieve in order to get a decent spam solution. There is no excuse not
to be doing Bayesian filtering in a modern mail client.

C.

 

[rick wintomac]

Microsoft apparently has an operational firewall between its Outlook
and Entourage developers. There are a lot of basic capabilities in
Outllook for years that aren't built into Entourage.

In a survival-of-the-fittest sense, it's understandable why MS doesn't
put 100% into an app designed for an OS that competes with Windows. On
the other hand, customer loyalty to MS and Windows-based products is
mostly out of necessity - and the peak of that necessity has already
passed.

Comments from MS developers or execs?

 

[rick wintomac]

Yeah what's with Entourage - I can't assign Tasks via e-mail like
Outlook has done for years. Not an endearing oversight, especially
alongside the other unnecessary shortcomings set forth in this forum.

 

[rick wintomac]

What's with Entourage? In the Preferences for Reading Mail, After
readling a message I can close or I can go to the next message, but I
can't go the the *previous* message like Outlook allows.

 

[Christopher Estep]

Microsoft apparently has an operational firewall between its Outlook
and Entourage developers. There are a lot of basic capabilities in
Outllook for years that aren't built into Entourage.

In a survival-of-the-fittest sense, it's understandable why MS doesn't
put 100% into an app designed for an OS that competes with Windows. On
the other hand, customer loyalty to MS and Windows-based products is
mostly out of necessity - and the peak of that necessity has already
passed.

Comments from MS developers or execs?

I happen to be neither, but there are also capabilities that Entourage has
that Outlook sorely lacks.

One of them (and one I am using currently) is support for USENET accounts
that are not hosted by Exchange servers. Outlook does not support this (and
version 12 has not corrected this lack). One major reason for this is that
Office for Windows is by and large aimed at the corporate world, while
Entourage (and Office:Mac) is aimed at the home, student, and small business
markets. Yes, there is *crossover*, but apparently not enough where
Microsoft will make the two flavors of mail applications (Outlook and
Entourage) more alike.

 

[rick wintomac]

This is a great column for the Entourage shortcomings. I started one
for other MS Office components, namely Excel, where I found a few
things missing from the MAC version 2004.