The Entourage Help Blog

Once in a while I get an idea from someone posting a question in the Microsoft Entourage newsgroup and wonder how I managed without it. Someone recently asked this question:

In the primary Inbox window, how can I have the dates in the Sent column display the day of the week also (i.e. Tuesday, 6/24/08, 3:00 PM instead of just 6/24/08, 3:00 PM)?

With a simple change to the International System Preferences pane I can add the weekday to all my dates making messages easier to locate.

Continue reading "Add weekdays to dates in Entourage 2008" »

We see lots of comments on the newsgroups about problems using Entourage, but it has many good features too.

One user recently wrote:

I'm curious as to what people here like about Entourage. I like the interface, and having my calendar, notes, email all in one place. Entourage is also pretty good at managing IMAP accounts, and certainly better than Outlook for that, but it's still pretty lacking, especially since I can't import Windows data (PST).

Get your feelings off your chest about what you like and don't like about Entourage. No Microsoft bashing allowed and no foul language. Hope this is cathartic. We will not be responding to comments. This is just an opportunity for you guys to sound off.

About three years ago, I wrote a pair of scripts for Microsoft Entourage. They would take the current page displayed in either FireFox or Safari and insert the URL of that page into an Entourage message window. If more than one page was displayed, the script would let you select one or more of those pages and insert the URLs of all the pages you selected.

They have proved to be popular scripts. I have, over the years, received a great deal of feedback on them - almost universally appreciative!

Continue reading "FireFox 'Insert URLs' script updated" »

Microsoft Entourage newsgroup poster Jean Frédéric raised this question:

Each time I try to enter a birthday date in the contact, it is rewritten.

Example: when I enter 12/06/1942, it turns to 12/06/39 The range of date concerned goes from 1940 to 1950.

In addition, when it syncs with iSync, there is a conflict between Address Book and Entourage that can only be solved by overwriting the Address Book data with Entourage's.

Both problems made me lose 70% of my birthday information...

Do you have any clue?

This reminded me of my earlier post Correct Time displays in Entourage calendar by adjusting the correct System Preferences where the International pane in System Preferences can cause odd behavior with time displays. The same System Preference plus an Entourage 2008 bug was also the cause of Jean Frédédric's date problem.

Continue reading "Date bug in Entourage 2008 causes birthday information loss" »

Several users are reporting this error:

This same error was fixed in a previous update with a workaround described here. However, this can be caused by user error (downloading the wrong updater or wrong language), but most likely it's caused by modifying files as described here. This includes modifying Office files as well as your OS file like removing languages. running Monolingual or Safari fix.

Fix if you have modified files:

Continue reading "12.1.1 updater woes- a version of the software required not found" »

Finally, a combo updater for Office 2004. This update includes all the improvements that were released in previous Office 2004 updates. It comes in at a whopping .dmg file size of 59mb.

The Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update is also available from Microsoft AutoUpdate. AutoUpdate is a program that automatically keeps Microsoft software up to date. To use AutoUpdate, start an Office program, and then click Check for Updates on the Help menu.

Improvements that are included in the update:

Continue reading "Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update" »

The Office 12.1.1 update is now up on MacTopia. The 12.1.1 update is not yet available through auto-update. MacBU seems to have set a pattern of releasing via direct download only prior to releasing via AutoUpdate. In the past this has resulted in some changes to make the updater more reliable. It's too early to say yet if this update will be problematic.

If you are concerned about updating, archive (zip) your Office for Mac folder prior to updating. If the update proves problematic for you, simply revert to the archived version.

Continue reading "Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update" »

Some customers still see problem with Entourage's Sync Service after upgrading to SP1. For example, they see frequent crashes in Entourage's sync service and constantly see conflicts for the same set of contacts and events in the sync alert dialog although they have resolved the conflicts previously.

Solution: Reset sync service in Entourage and the sync service in the OS. Until you clean up your data stored in the truth (a special database that stores sync information on a Mac), you will continuously sync bad data and duplicates over and over.

Continue reading "Sync Services still causing problems for some users after SP1" »

Entourage 2004 and 2008 users are unable to receive e-mails that contain other e-mails as an attachment if their email server is Exchange 2007 SP1. The solution is to Install RU2 directly on Exchange server. Links and details follow.

Continue reading "E-mail message as attachment is unreadable in Exchange Server 2007 environment" »

Recently Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2008 for Mac. There are some new features in SP1 for Entourage 2008 users, one of them is 'Client Certificate-based Authentication'. Be sure to check out Amir Haque's blog article Client Certificate-based Authentication in Entourage 2008. Amir will walk you thru the setup on server & client sides so that it will be helpful to those who want to use this feature in Entourage.

Antidote RX est un correcteur orthographique et grammatical pour la langue française qui s'intègre à de nombreuses applications. Druide (la maison mère) vient de mettre en ligne une mise à jour GRATUITE permettant l'intégration à Office 2008.

Le mode de fonctionnement de cette application et son intégration à Entourage ont été présentés dans l'article précédent Spell-checking done right.

Continue to read in English

Continue reading "Antidote updated to work with Office 2008" »

A contact of mine at the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) of Microsoft has verified that they have reproduced a problem first seen in the release of SP1 for Office 2008 where a new certificate message may appear at startup with no apparent means of disabling it.

Continue reading "MacBU reproducing new Exchange and SP1 certificate error" »

I installed the QT 7.5 update today and I had an OMG moment. All my contacts seemed to disappear. When I tried to address a message nothing was coming up in autofill. I checked my Address Book in Entourage 2008 and there were no contacts listed. I selected different views in the folder side bar and the contacts came back up, but I still couldn't address a message. Then Entourage crashed. After restart it's working.

If this happens to you, be sure to send in the crash log when MERP comes up.

Use this reminder that things happen that are disastrous and unexpected. Make sure you have backups.

• There is an Automator action that will backup Entourage 2008 contacts to a text file. Open Automator and select "Export Entourage Contacts" I don't have Entourage 2004 installed to verify this is available for Entourage 2004.


• In all versions you can always use File --> Export and select as tab delimited file.
  

My jaw dropped.

Right on this page Apple -- Mac OS X Leopard -- Snow Leopard about midway down Apple says:

Microsoft Exchange Support
Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 built into Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Mac OS X uses the Exchange Web Services protocol to provide access to Exchange Server 2007. Because Exchange is supported on your Mac and iPhone, you'll be able to use them anywhere with full access to your email, contacts, and calendar.

I don't have to ask myself if Apple can pull this off. Of course they can! But with a "free" Exchange solution "out-of-the-box" what does this mean for Microsoft Entourage?

Continue reading "Will Snow Leopard be the end of Entourage?" »

Previously, we discussed a workaround when you get the error " A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume" that involved copying the installer to your desktop. You can also get this error if you have modified Office or your system files.

Have you "trimmed the fat" on your computer? Have you run a language pack utility to save disk space? What about Monolingual, Safari fix or Xslimmer? Office for Mac 2008 Installer will install both sets of code (Intel/PPC). Did you strip out the additional code? All of these modifications can cause your update to fail.

Did you rename Microsoft Word to Word 2008? (name, location, and items in the folder have to remain the same as installed) Did you move any Office components? If you rename or modify any of the files in the Microsoft Office 2008 folder, you cannot install product updates.

Did you install and then immediately upgrade without restarting? The update usually fails on Tiger, but it will not always fail and it will not always pass on Leopard. Best Advice: restart and be safe.

Fix when you have modified files:

Continue reading "Failure to update Office 2008" »

As a quick reference, I have posted a list of more than 40 Microsoft knowledgebase articles related to Entourage and Exchange on The Entourage Help Page.

This page lists articles related to Entourage 2004 (11.2.0 - SP2) and higher. Only summaries and symptoms are provided as the full content of the articles may be updated by Microsoft at any time. Links to the full articles are included.

Microsoft KB articles related to Entourage and Exchange

Shawn, a co-worker in one of our Boston offices, was bitten today not by a bug but rather a new feature in Entourage 2008 SP1 (12.1.0). Every message he was receiving showed his correct E-mail address but the wrong display name. They looked something like this:

instead of this:

At first we thought possibly his Exchange account was incorrectly configured. A quick check of Active Directory showed everything was just fine.

Maybe, someone had Shawn's correct E-mail address but had mistakenly put his company name in the wrong field in a contact record? Nope. This was happening with every message he received and from multiple senders.

Where was his name entered incorrectly?

Continue reading "This bug is really a new feature in SP1" »

I've posted version 2.0 of my EntourageExchangeSetup AppleScript on The Entourage Help Page that includes support for Microsoft Entourage 2008's Kerberos feature as well as some minor additions and bug fixes.

This AppleScript is intended to be modified by an administrator to assist his Entourage users with the setups of their Exchange server accounts. It has been tested specifically with Entourage 2004 11.2.6, 11.3.3, 11.3.7 and Entourage 12.00, 12.0.1 and 12.1.0 but should work with any version of Entourage 2004 SP2 (11.2.0) and higher. Every company's network is different so this script was written to provide enough ideas for a novice scripter to be able to adapt it for use in his network in just a few minutes.

Continue reading "Updated Exchange setup script supports Entourage 2008" »

"Jeremy", a Microsoft Entourage newsgroup reader, asked if others had seen his issue where his calendar was not displaying the AM/PM symbols even though he was certain his clock was not set to 24-hour format.

After reinstalling Mac OS X, "Kent" found that Entourage was using the AM/PM time format even though his clock was set to use 24-hour format.

"JMB" reported that every new event in his calendar defaulted to a time of "7:08 PM" and he can't adjust the time at all.

Are these bugs in Entourage or signs of Database corruption? The answer actually lies outside of Entourage and in System Preferences but maybe not where you would think.

Continue reading "Correct Time displays in Entourage calendar by adjusting the correct System Preferences" »

We are celebrating our first birthday since the launch of the Entourage Help Blog. We want to thank all our readers and contributing authors for making this a successful year.

We're also exploring ways to expand our support such as developing a Wiki and beginning a mailing list for those who prefer E-mail over newsgroups. To help us understand what you need we'd appreciate your feedback and advice on how we can improve.

In a short while we will open an online survey and you can give us your opinion on what we're doing right and where we can do better. As a "thank you", all participants will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual from O'Reilly.

Continue reading "It's our first birthday" »