The Entourage Help Blog

For what MS is charging there should be full Exchange functionality. We've been waiting since 04 for a major upgrade. And MS was the last major app to go native Intel. MS could have done much better. After all they have the money and the skill. I guess just not the will.

I would just like to comment on the fact that it was EXTREMELY difficult to get my Dad to switch to a Mac at home being a heavy business user, and the fact that I've been playing up this upgrade to allow for relatively FULL Exchange email support is going to not only allow his frustrations to come full circle, but also doubt my decision to switch him to the Apple platform.

Essentially, after MORE THAN FOUR YEARS of time to prepare for this launch (including delays), a complete Entourage Exchange feature-for-feature parity with Outlook seems to me like it should have been the #1 priority for the MBU besides native Intel-compatibility. It makes me wonder what the MBU has been up to in the meantime (other than rather frequent updates to 2004--props there) to seem to have so much trouble integrating the FULL Exchange into Entourage in a timely manner.

Therefore I'm convinced that the MBU has a tough time talking with the Outlook team, as I find it hard to believe that the rather simpler Mac Office suite has taken significantly more time to port over than the much, much, much more complex Adobe Creative Suites.

Seriously MBU... take some notes from Adobe! You're alienating your customer base! I'm reluctantly upgrading, but only because I want native Intel-compatibly. Personally, I could care less about the new features as they don't seem all that exciting and as fresh as could be. Step it up! Hire more programmers if you need to, but at least give us something we've been waiting for since last century!

Otherwise, for my list... Everything else here is a "ditto" for me, but it's just saddening that I even have to think about making a list. Sorry MBU, but my fuse has run out for you.

I'm not aware of any bug about this. Although this may only happen with Entourage are you sure this is a problem with Entourage itself?

I suggest posting your problem in the Microsoft newsgroup for Entourage http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage to see if anyone else chimes in. If this unique to you then that suggests possibly some sort of server configuration or network issue.

I really need the following:
1. Tasks
2. Categories
3. Mobile device conduits that keep categories etc. The current Entourage -> ical -> PDA looses all categories (which is completely useless for me - I end up running parallels/winXP to sync to my PDA. But then categories and tasks are not synced to the server.... so I have no solution).

I would like the following:
1. Notes

I use Outlook 2007 on a PC at work, and I use a MAC with Outlook 2007 trough Parallels at home. My mail is on an Exchange server at work. I was very much disappointed when I noticed that Entourage still does not show to which messages I already replied or forwarded at work. This makes Entourage pretty useless for me!!!!

I work for a consulting company that is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and I've switched over to using a Mac at work exclusively. Our list of needs for Entourage match yours, so I'll just second your list.

However, I've got something else to say on the subject of Office for Mac: Why are there no versions of Front Page, Publisher, Access, etc for Mac? Why do Mac users only get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and (crippled)Outlook (aka Entourage)?

This is absolutely unacceptable, and I can't in good conscience recommend Office to any Mac user. It's simply not worth the money. If it's not going to work properly with Exchange, or have the full suite of apps available to Windows users, then I'm simply going to recommend OpenOffice/NeoOffice to Mac users.

It galls me to have to continue to maintain a Parallels workstation to have complete Office functionality. I'm sure this is Microsoft's intention, but why provide only a half-product?

Hi John!

Your request is actually part of my Entourage (non-Exchange) list. ;-)

Hello Everyone,

Here is a copy of a 'suggestion' I just sent to Microsoft. It details needs for Entoruage:

I have recently purchased a copy of Office 2008 to evaluate the product before making a decision to roll-out the suite to our 40+ Mac users.

We have been using Exchange server for over 10 years and make extensive use of the calendaring and groupware features it provides. It has been the right decision to use Exchange as our groupware server as we have a mixed-platform (Mac and Windows) environment, we use OWA and we use Windows Mobile-based ActiveSync PDA's.

So far Entourage has not been a viable Exchange client for us due to its many limitations and omissions. With the release of Entourage 2008 I was hoping we could finally switch away from Outlook under Classic and finally upgrade our Mac's to Leopard and/or Intel processors.

Sadly I do not feel Entourage meets our needs and these are the reasons why:

No Task syncing - many of our users use Outlook Tasks which they create and process via webmail and via Windows Mobile PDA's as well as in Outlook on the Mac desktop. Without Tasks that sync to the Exchange server Entourage leaves these users without a solution as changes to Tasks do not sync to the handhelds and vice-versa.

No Note syncing - Not having notes that sync creates the same issues as with Tasks.

Cannot modify/create/delete server-side rules - almost every user creates and modifies server-side rules which allow them to move, delete or forward mail to different folders/recipients. Although they can create rules in Entourage they only run when the client application is open. This is useless when people access their accounts via webmail and/or Windows Mobile PDA's as the rules simply don't work.

Cached Mode - Many of our users hot-desk this means they move from machine to machine to check their mail. Many users manage multiple mailboxes for their manager or resources. All users have mailboxes in excess of 1GB in size. Because of Cached Mode ALL of a users data as well as ALL the additional mailboxes they add is copied to the LOCAL database. This takes AGES and makes opening shared calendars so slow its unusable. It also means if a user moves to another machine they have to wait for all they changed data to sync. This can be many many megabytes and can take hours. Why cannot Entourage use an un-cached mode for Exchange accounts just like Webmail does?

Issue with KB Article 926521 - We have used Windows Mobile handsets for over 2 years and want to continue to do so. The fact the sent items originating from the handsets do not display correctly in Entourage makes the program unusable as we cannot find the messages we sent via Windows Mobile

Global Address List - What can't we set the Global Address List as the default address list in Entourage?

On My Computer - Why can't we remove this folder from view as we do not use it?

Resources in Appointments - Calendar does not recognize our rooms, projectors or cameras as a resource, why is this?

With all of these issues combined I fell I cannon currently recommend Entourage 2008 for our userbase. We need to move to Leopard and Intel Macs and so I am forced to consider switching to Lotus Domino server for our Groupware and BlackBerry for our handhelds and Lotus produce a full-featured Mac Groupware client. I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS I want to stick with an ALL MICROSOFT solution. Please could you let me know if any of these issues are being addressed so I can try and make the right decision. I now you do not reply to these posts, but in case someone wants to talk this through with me in more details my e-mail us gary.eary@20.20.co.uk

Thank you for taking the time to read this comment.

Gary Eary
IT Manager
20|20 Limited
http://www.20.20.co.uk