Things You Hate About Entourage

[Brian Donohue]

True, but even though the insertion point is at the top... your SIGNATURE is
still placed at the very bottom. So, it's kind of bugged I guess.

Heh, it's a new breed... top-and-bottom-posting lol.

 

[Joe Husk]

It did, but Outlook Express grew out of Claris Emailer:

Claris Emailer -> Outlook Express -> Entourage.

 

[mmmmark]

Well, I'll be. I didn't remember that little tidbit. Just the normal piece
of trivial information that I usuallyl pride myself with knowing. lol
Comes in handy when playing the "storehouse of useless knowledge" game at
home. ;-)

Did Apple sell emailer to Microsoft? Or was this part of that whole deal
with the devil that was made to have IE and OE be the defaults on new Macs?

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

I don't think Apple sold Emailer to Microsoft. I think the original Fog City
development team went to work for Microsoft. Perhaps that happened after
Claris folded and there may have been some cross licensing that went on.

 

[Judy]

I am a new user of Entourage X, having before used Outlook Express on a
1997 Mac clone.

First, I use two identities and prefer to because of the quantity of
folders and messages in each one. In order to switch from identity to
the other, I am required to close other Office applications (usually
Word, Excel). There was a string of messages on this list about that
problem, and the rationale for this annoyance is something trivial,
such as the dictionary. There should be a way to turn this requirement
off, as it is a great annoyance to me 40 or 50 times a day.

Second, the address book. I've only tried to print out a portion of the
address book once and so perhaps have not found the solution to my
problem, but the address book printouts take more than half a page per
entry. I can't figure out how to shrink them, as there's no format
choice the way there was in Outlook Express. I need printouts of
relevant portions of the address book for when I travel and do not want
to carry hundreds of pages!

Judy

 

[Judy]

I am a new user of Entourage X, having before used Outlook Express on a
1997 Mac clone.

First, I use two identities and prefer to because of the quantity of
folders and messages in each one. In order to switch from identity to
the other, I am required to close other Office applications (usually
Word, Excel). There was a string of messages on this list about that
problem, and the rationale for this annoyance is something trivial,
such as the dictionary. There should be a way to turn this requirement
off, as it is a great annoyance to me 40 or 50 times a day.

Second, the address book. I've only tried to print out a portion of the
address book once and so perhaps have not found the solution to my
problem, but the address book printouts take more than half a page per
entry. I can't figure out how to shrink them, as there's no format
choice the way there was in Outlook Express. I need printouts of
relevant portions of the address book for when I travel and do not want
to carry hundreds of pages!

Judy

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

No, Joe is imagining things. Outlook Express Mac emerged from an earlier MS
app called "Microsoft Mail and News". But the developer who had started
Claris Emailer (Jud Spencer) for Fog City, and stayed with it when it was
bought by Claris, was hired by Microsoft to develop Outlook Express, and
brought 3 members of his team with him. I used to think that was after Apple
terminated Emailer, but apparently it was actually before the very last
Emailer version (2.0v3) was released. OE 4 (yes, the first version) was
released somewhat later than that. Jud is still with Entourage. He has
always insisted that OE was NOT built on Emailer. You can find a few
features in common, but not many. The AppleScript implementations were
similar, as they were both based on the old Apple (OS 7 vintage) Mail Suite,
and implemented by the same developer (a different one, Dan Crevier).

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

6. The "leave message on server" option for POP accounts (a sort of
poor-man's IMAP option) became very unreliable with 2004. Messages
occasionally disappear from the inbox (sometimes while selecting them!)
requiring a "Refresh Message List" action to get them back (and
subsequent reset of all messages to the Unread status).

It sounds as if you must actually mean the "Allow Online Access" feature
that lets you "see" the server itself? Has it got unreliable in 2004? That's
possible - they aren't really supporting it any more. You should get
yourself a real IMAP account - IMAP support is wonderful, much improved in
2004. That "online access" for POP accounts pre-dates support for IMAP (it's
really from Outlook Express Mac, which didn't do IMAP properly).

As far as "leave messages on the server" goes, it still works perfectly. It
leaves messages on the server. I've used it since the first day of Entourage
2004, on my laptop. No problems ever. (I don't use "online access", and
eventually messages do get removed from the server by my desktop G5.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

4. Amen on the default of Show in Groups. What a pain. Likewise, try hiding
a bunch of unwanted columns. There's no way to do it in one fell swoop. You
have to deselected them one at a time, and do it over and over for every
folder. Arg!

But you can do it a lot more quickly by right-clicking (control-clicking)
the column header and selecting or de-selecting from the contextual menu
that pops up.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Simon T]

I have come from Outlook, as Windows is always crashing or hanging.
However as a contact manager, Entourage has some very basic
holes.(Entourage 2004 SP2) I have 900 clients broken down amongst 50
odd categories. Among Entouages many problems that are listed by
others, 2 really irritating things that are now likely to drive me back
to Outlook and Windows. In Entourage is a Contact can not be easily
linked to a note. (Its easy enough to link a note to a contact but not
visa versa). Why is not automatic? In Outlook you can very easily see
in one "drop down" command all emails AND notes that you have made on
the back of say phone calls. This is elementary to a contact manager.
Without this Entourage as business contact manager is nearly useless.
Another irritating and time wasting nigle is that you cant "add a new
name from the same company"
There are many others - and I have only just made the switch.

Does anybody know of another Contact manager package that is
compatable with Mac OX 10.4.02? I really could do without going back to
Windows!

 

[Pitch]

"But you can do it a lot more quickly by right-clicking
(control-clicking)
the column header and selecting or de-selecting from the contextual
menu
that pops up. "

WOW. Great tip, Paul. Thanks for that one.

 

[Sonya]

Clarification: Since I have folders with emails stored in it so my Inbox
isn't cluttered, I want to find a way to view ALL messages inlcuding ones
in the various folders without moving any emails.

Duh! Of course, I know that I can view the contents of a folder by clicking
on it.

I just want to view the contents of all the folders at once by date order.
Thanks!

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi,
have you tried creating a custom view? That's what they were designed for:
regrouping different elements across the different Entourage folders and
modules in one single place. If you select "Messages" for Item Types, "All
Folders" for Location and add the accounts or folders you'd like to see in
the Criteria field, then you should get what you want.

Michel

 

[Eva]

yes that is what I mean. It seems tedious to have to go to advanced
find, and add criterion just to search "all". You would think that the
first step would be search all, then your advanced options would be to
narrow your search criteria. But then, with how slow the search
function it, that is probably why they did. Frustrating.

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

Apparently what you need to do is create a mail merge document in Word,
formatting everything small so that you can fit multiple records per page.
Then you export from Address Book, do a merge into Word, then you will
probably want to step through the document and insert page breaks at the
start of each new letter of the alphabet. It's a considerable amount of work
for what should be a simple process, but apparently Microsoft believes you
should never be given an easy way to get your data out of a one of its
products, even if it's printing to paper in a useful format. That way they
can lock you into using their product indefinitely.

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

1. set advanced search as default

Install Menu Master
http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=mac&seqNum=50
And then reassign the Command-F shortcut to the Advanced Find. This is what
I did and it works perfectly and now I never see the worthless basic find
dialog. Menu Master works with almost every app out there and is a bargain
for customizing apps to work the way you want.

2. have search to remember my settings

Amen, brothers and sisters.

3. customize the toolbars

What, specifically would you like to change?

4. have gifs animate consistently
5. have HTML behave properly in outgoing messages
6. be able to create a rule that actually deletes junk mail within
certain parameters

What's the problem in this regard? I have lots of rules and as far as I
know, they seem to work properly.

7. assign a default category other than None
8. format font in Calendar
9. speed up search

I hear that. Search is so slow I dread using it.

 

[Owen Linzmayer]

Thanks. Learn something new every day. That's one of the design flaws behind
contextual menus: there's no indication that they are there.

 

[Chris]

Brian-

FYI, there is a way to default top-post. Go to Prefs | Mail and News Pref |
Reply & Forward.

You'll see an option to "Place reply at top of message." Took me awhile to
find it, but it's there.

Chris

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Entourage is just getting to the size that there are a few things not also
getting into the main menus (e.g. "Synchronize Now" on Exchange Folders,
"Repair Message List" on IMAP folders, Get Info on IMAP servers), as main
menus become in danger of getting too long and cluttered. But still 98% or
so of available commands are still in the main menus, and browsable, the
large majority with keyboard shortcuts listed. There a re a few things
available only from buttons, but easily discoverable. However, it's really
worth control-clicking all over the place to discover contextual menus:
virtually all main menu buttons are also available from contextual menus,
which are often very handy, particularly since you can't really remember
every single keyboard shortcut - and sometimes a find a few extra things in
there too. They're mostly just aids to convenience though - you should be
able to do almost everything from the main menus and buttons. Most commands
have 4 different ways to get to them (main menu, button/popup, keyboard
shortcut/contextual menu).

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Melba's Jammin']

I am a new user of Entourage X, having before used Outlook Express on a
1997 Mac clone.

First, I use two identities and prefer to because of the quantity of
folders and messages in each one. In order to switch from identity to
the other, I am required to close other Office applications (usually
Word, Excel). There was a string of messages on this list about that
problem, and the rationale for this annoyance is something trivial,
such as the dictionary. There should be a way to turn this requirement
off, as it is a great annoyance to me 40 or 50 times a day.

Second, the address book. I've only tried to print out a portion of the
address book once and so perhaps have not found the solution to my
problem, but the address book printouts take more than half a page per
entry. I can't figure out how to shrink them, as there's no format
choice the way there was in Outlook Express. I need printouts of
relevant portions of the address book for when I travel and do not want
to carry hundreds of pages!

Judy

If I understand your problem correctly, here's what I do: In Address
Book, select those contacts I want to print (cmd+click on each one for
non-contiguous contacts); File --> Print; click Layout to select what
bits of info I want printed; then choose printER layout (I use an Epson
R300 and Layout is in the dropdown menu the default choice of which is
Copies & Pages) to select how many pages worth of data I want printed on
each sheet of paper; i.e., I can choose to have between 1 and 16 pages
worth of info printed on each sheet of paper. If I'm wanting a paper
copy of my whole book, I typically select 4 pages per sheet for
readability; but that is, I believe, a printer-specific choice. I hope
this helps you.