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Office 2008 Enterprise Series: OOF Coming to Entourage

I travel a lot. I'm in and out of our Seattle and Mountain View offices on a regular basis and spend way too much time sitting on the airplane. One of the most frustrating things about using Entourage 2004 is that every time I travel, I have no easy way to indicate to folks e-mailing me that I am unable to reply for the next few hours. Microsoft's culture is driven by e-mail communications and not responding to an important e-mail in the middle of a workday is the equivalent of skipping an important meeting or not answering your boss' phone calls. It’s a tough standard to meet when sitting offline at 30,000 feet.

There’s a real handy feature in Exchange, Outlook and Outlook Web Access called “Out of Office. ”Around here, we call it “OOF” (pronounced ooo-ph--see more historical details on the Exchange team blog). OOF allows you to configure your Exchange account to automatically reply to incoming messages with a quick note telling the sender that you are not able to respond because you are currently out of the office. Whenever I fly, I set my OOF to respond with the time I should be back on the ground and connected once again. The message is generated by the server, so I whenever I close my laptop and hop on the flight, I am confident that my coworkers are still notified of my current status.

This hasn’t always been very easy on the Mac. For years, you’ve had to launch Safari, log into Outlook Web Access, and hunt down my Out of Office settings. Then, after every flight and an Inbox full of new messages demanding attention, you must remember to log back into Outlook Web Access and turn the auto-reply off. Personally, I forget to do this a lot, only realizing my OOF message is still on a week later after a coworker replies with “are you still on vacation?”

With Entourage 2008, you now have the ability to configure your Out of Office settings without ever launching your web browser. It’s now right there, in Entourage’s Tools menu. Just like in Outlook 2007, you can configure your OOF to send separate replies based on who sent you a message and automatically turn on and off between certain date and times—no more worrying about remembering to turn off your OOF message.

For setting OOF, Entourage communicates with an Exchange 2007 server in the exact same way as Outlook 2007, through web services. As Craig mentioned, we’ve worked a lot with the Exchange team on determining ways we could bring new functionality to Entourage in the future and OOF is one of the first features taking this exciting new direction. For users on Exchange 2000 and 2003 servers, OOF will continue to work, though the more advanced features under “more options” are not available.

One question: the protocols we use to communicate with is exactly the kind of information we’ve included in updates to our Office Resource Kit and will be included in updates for Office 2008. However, we realize there's a lot more issues you’d like to hear detailed from us. We've been working on publishing Entourage-specific articles on TechNet. Any suggestions for topics that would make your life easier as someone in an enterprise with Entourage users?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Nice to see OOF will be available in the next version. It is a common request in our environment, especially users switching from Outlook to Entourage 2004. Are there plans to allow Entourage 2008 users to import their Outlook 2003/2007 PST files? Archiving of email is a big issue with email quotas in place on the Exchange server, especially for users utilizing both Windows and Mac OS X platforms. Many users will launch Outlook 2003/2007 using Parallels and Windows XP on their Intel based Macs only for the ability to read their PST files.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Keep an eye on Mac Mojo for sneak peeks at new Office 2008 features including Entourage 2008. In his Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off Craig Eisler, MacBU General Manager, announces a commitment to Entourage in the enterprise and begins with a look

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    I hope Entourage will work going through an ISA Server configured with OWA authentication; we are really frustrated that our Microsoft ISA can't work with it now.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Pessimist in me:  It's about time! Optimist in me:  Thanks a whole lot for finally releasing some concrete details! Either way, good job, guys.  It's this kind of information we're looking for.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    You've got to be kidding.  I should be getting excited about OOF?  Are you guys trying to punish us with this release?  I mean, really... what did we do to you? The refusal to mention "MAPI" is deafening.  Can someone explain why it's so hard to 1. Get a MAPI client and 2. mention ANY ACTUAL FEATURES.   You're waiting until January and I'm guessing Apple's going to beat you at your own game come October as far as Exchange is concerned.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    OOF is great, but we really need to be able to book EXCHANGE resources such as rooms. Optional meeting invites would be nice too.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Thank you! You just made my life a whole lot easier come January. One question is if OOF and Exchange 2003 will notify you when you open up Entourage and tell you that it's still on.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    I use Outlook 2007 as well as Entourage. I wish MS would just take Outlook and make a Mac version and be done with it. There are contact, scheduling and many other features that just are not in Entourage and for the life of me I don't understand why. Maybe it's just Bill Gates not wanting us Mac users to have everything that Office users on the Windows side have had for years. Another example, why can't I be sent a message when my email has been delivered to its recepient, opened or even read? Outlook has had this for years but Entourage offers no such feature. If Enourage 2008 is going to work with the Exchange Server 2007 just as Office 2007 on the PC side does then why not open up the feature set for us Mac users. It's about time MS brings some equality to its email clients.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    This is a very important feature that came in handy during Hurricane Dean here during August.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    I work at a university that currently uses Exchange 2003 server. I'm assuming they'll be updating to 2007 soon, but will Entourage 2008 and this OOF feature work with Exchange 2003 server? As far as other features we're looking for, what about enhancing the Outlook Web access for Mac users so that it is as robust as the Windows version? I know, it's a big hurdle, but with all the Web 2.0 out there, it must be feasible. This is likely a Exchange server guys question, but oh well. A nice feature we'd like to see is the ability to drag and drop gobs of e-mail messages from a folder (either one on the server or in a personal folder) into a local folder on my Mac...and have them saved as universally readable text files (not Entourage format). Administrators in particular save every single e-mail and want them in a format that will be readable long after we're dead and buried (well, at least it seems that way). Currently, they click on one e-mail at a time and do a save-as and select the text option (Rich Text save-as would be nice too).

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    This is certainly a welcome addition to Entourage. I do wonder about the syncing of "Categories" and "Projects" to the exhange server, so when I set the category in Entourage it will sync and have the same setting in Outlook. Any idea if or when this will be included? Keep up the good work , and please post mote screenshots!

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    A desperately-needed option for OOF is the ability to send replies only to those who directly send email to you; otherwise, everyone on every list of which you're a member will get spammed by your OOF messages, and they will all curse you for a fool. Another desperately-needed feature is the ability to write server-side Exchange rules from within Entourage.  This isn't supported via OWA, and so the only way to do it is via Outlook on Windows, which doesn't help folks like me who have no access to Windows nor a desire to run it if we did.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Archiving is a big thing for our department as well.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    I need:

  1. Ability to work in online mode instead of constantly caching every single folder.  I have a management assistant who uses Entourage to access her bosses shared mailboxes.  And because of Entourage's ridiculous caching, her Microsoft User Data folder is 70 GB!!
  2. Outlook users always receive new information instantly while Entourage users have to wait for changes in shared folders to be cached and synchronized.  When a user adds or changes information in a shared folder such as contacts, calendar, public folders, notes, tasks, etc., the changes should be pushed instantly to Entourage, instead of waiting for Entourage to synchronize every few minutes.  
  3. Server based rules which are stored on the server and continue to work even if Entourage is not running.  Entourage should also be able to manage rules that were created in Outlook, and vice versa.
  4. Support for Notes and Tasks folders on the Exchange server, as well as the ability to configure sharing permissions for Notes and Tasks.
  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    How about native pst file support?  Instead of having to use a pst converter which takes several hours to import, Entourage should allow users to read and write to pst files directly.  Entourage should also be able to create pst files which can be used in Outlook.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Why can this not be configured from meetings in the calendar? Can i not have two check boxes in a calendar entry for 1. Out of office 2. (sub checkbox) Send OOF.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    The only feature that Entourage really needs is MAPI.  OOF is handy.  Booking resources is handy.  MAPI is essential.  I'll be first in the queue with my chequebook when MAPI is implemented but until then, I'll keep using Open Office. In fact, MAPI is so important that I'll even overlook the absence of VBA.  But seriously, what were you guys thinking when you removed the possibility of cross-platform scripting?  Can't Microsoft see which way the wind is blowing (towards Open Office, which is genuinely cross-platform compatible).  Share your toys.  It's what everyone else does (even Apple shares QuickTime and all it's functionality, including DRM).  Don't keep the bits that ensure corporate monopoly for yourself.  It isn't nice and I'm not even sure it's legal.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    it's about time. Please post some screen shots or at else give us a public beta as you did with office 2007

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    As a enterprise user - the OOF is a very welcome and long awaited for feature.  But i would have to echo the remarks for being able to reserve and create resources as well as better archival features and pst support.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    are you kidding me? required functionality in entourage: 1- read and delete flags implmented compatible with excange server and blackberry 2- possibility to mark messages as private/confidential/ 3- request reply-confirmation 4- request read-confirmation 5- attach contacts in an easy way 6- zip (archive) files when attaching 7- optional attendees when scheduling meetngs 8- resources in scheduling 9- better synchronisation of mail folders 10- better synchronisation of public folders etc, etc, need I go on, why don't you just at least provide the same functionality outlook users have?

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    just a few others

  1. Support for syncing Notes and Tasks with Exchange server
  2. delegation of tasks
  3. sync categories - compatible with outlook client
  4. better caching - synchronisation suport
  5. server-based rules
  6. edit mail in true HTML
  7. use word as editor for advanced editing options
  8. imporved contact managment (for requested functionality please look at Outlook from Microsoft!)
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    One I would love is Kerberos support.  I have a cross-realm setup where my users are authenticated to AD via OS X's support which allows for Kerberized services to support single-signon.  This would be nice as the only thing that continues to ask for a password is Entourage...

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    You know when I started reading this entry I was excited but then it got to the part about functionality loss if you dont use Exchange Server 2007. This makes me wonder how much of the new Exchange support will work with anything less than Exchange 2007. It would be completely unacceptable to me to add all this new Exchange support but require 2007 when most users are probably still on 2003 or 2000.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    How about the ability to click on a sender/to/cc name and get their correct information.  Right now the best that can be done seems to be to go into the ab, select the correct ab and enter their name.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    1: to the bloke who said "MAPI", it's my understanding MAPI is a dead protocol to even the Exchange team. It's all about http these days. 2: FINALLY! 3: I echo the sentiment of online mode vs cached, server-based rules and all the other feature-parity comment, although at this point I suspect you're pretty much feature locked, so if you don't have it now you prob won't

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    As a current user of Entourage 2004, I'd really like to know that Entourage 2008 will improve on Exchange server support.  I'm hoping that this new OOF will work with at least the previous version of Exchange (2003) and not just with Exchange 2007. As for other features, it would be really nice to have full support for Palm syncing.  I rely on keeping my Entourage and Treo 755p (Palm) data synchronized each and every day.  Current support with Entourage 2004 is ok, but it could be better (synching birthdays, URL) and I am hoping for that with Entourage 2008.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    I too would like to ask for the synching of Notes. I have many many notes to myself that I need to access.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Even if Office 2008 is as nice as 2007 and has better OOF support, the key for me is Exchange support.  Entourage is awful, and the only reason I'm forced to use a PC at work.  Just make Outlook, or have Entourage not use WebDAV.  Why, Microsoft, why?  I'm trying my best not to believe in just the stereotypes and think of you as a nice software company. Instead, I'm pushed more towards using iWork and Mail.app.  Fine by me, but I think you'd want the business of Exchange users.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Just to echo a few comments above, I absolutely loved Outlook 2003, and groan every day when I start up Entourage 2004.  The import process was particularly painful (I lost a lot of attachments and messages when trying to use O2M), indicating a sore need for PST support. Syncing to a Palm Treo is also painful, since the conduit between the two leave a lot to be desired (locations of meetings don't sync?  no field mapping ability?  come on). I also really miss archiving of my messages.  My mail database on my Mac gets bigger and bigger each day, with no end in sight. So essentially, put Outlook into Mac form and we'll all be happy.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    I would like:

  • the ability to see subscribed calendars side-by-side
  • better os x integration in address book, so you can send sms via your bluetooth and mobile phone, like you can in Apple Addressbook
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Requested Entourage Features that would improve our Enterprise:
  1. Single sign on, from login credentials or Kerberos.
  2. Auto-account creation, again from login credentials, so that you can skip running the set up wizard.
  3. Ability to detect changes on the server side, such as a mailbox move, or public server change. These are now fixed as preferences at the time of account creation.
  4. Booking of resources
  5. Move calendar appointment out of inbox after they are accepted.
  6. True read/write support for PST files, not just import
  7. Ability to work in non-cached mode (keep all email on server and don't sync locally)
  8. Receipts
  9. Ability to send HTML mail (we use a 3rd party script for this now) These are all real issues, limitations and complaints that I have encounted in supporting Entourage in our Exchange environment.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    What I would like to see in Entourage:
  1. OOF is nice, but requires good integration with spam filters. I don't want to tell all the spammers that my account is active.
  2. Make it play nice with Exchange. Yes, really.
  3. Allow it to import and export e-mail without problems in formats that can be read by Apple Mail or Thunderbird.
  4. Give it the full functionality of Outlook on Windows. If it can do more, so much the better. If it does less than Outlook, not good.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    How about not using a monolithic database, I don't care if it is proprietary but backups can be huge even if only a few messages may have changed each day.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    "Anyone outside my company"? 1-- I only want to send OOF messages to people inside my company. People need an easy way to avoid sending OOF messages to e-mail lists. 2-- Ditch the database & go with text files 3-- Full Outlook feature list 2 out of 3 will be fine.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Exchange 2007?  You can't be serious. While I'm sure Microsoft would love to see everyone migrate to Exchange 2007, in the real world Exchange 2003 is where the vast majority of your users live for at least a couple more years. To think that all the expectations you've built for Entourage 2008 will require Exchange 2007 is a monumental let-down. Say it isn't so.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Please add in the ability to sync notes and tasks with the Exchange Server!

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    Exchange features in Entourage 2008 will not require Exchange 2007.  However, some features will work better with Exchange 2007 than 2000 or 2003.  Out of Office is one such feature--it works fine with 2000 and 2003, but the more advanced options (everything on the bottom half of the screenshot) only work with Exchange 2007.  Outlook 2007 works the same way, basic OOF options are available against older servers and more advanced OOF options against Exchange 2007.  The limitation is more so because older versions of Exchange simply don't support the more advanced options.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    What about winmail.dat, will you fix that problem?

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    This is nice but....... I really need MS Access for Mac. Not because I want to use it but people keep sending me Access database that they want me to work with.

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    As an Apple Consultant, I can tell you the top 7 items and their priority (as ranked by my clients):

  1. Out-of-Office support (Which, I suppose, is taken care of)
  2. SSO/Kerberos (OR at least, ability to do a password change for the account via Entourage)
  3. Better performance...even on G5s some actions (moving thousands of emails) can be painfully slow...and rainbow-invoking
  4. Package-based installers and updaters....hello, ARD anyone? Pretty sure the MacBU has this...
  5. Receipts/Confirmations
  6. Archiving/Auto-Archiving
  7. True...real...HTML
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    Regarding TechNet articles, I suggest that these should be included under the actual Exchange Server 200x Deployment articles. Certified Partners will appreciate this, instead of having to hunt the article down into MacTopia.

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    In regard to full HTML support: tables are definitely needed, but I also need to have the ability to edit the HTML my self. We create signatures for everyone in our office, and they only work on Outlook. Entourage just shows the HTML code.

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    How about syncing with WIndows Mobile phone?  Can you add a native support in Office 2008 for smartphone syncing?

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    The bar is set @ Outlook 2001 for Mac as the benchmark in terms of functionality. I applaud the MBU for posting this, this is a good first step. Notice I did not say last step. From a Enterprise deployment perspective:

  1. Single signon
  2. Voting
  3. Resource scheduling
  4. Better connection on the back end then Webdav
  5. Ability to set it up in true Enterprise mode , rather than having the "Folders on my computer" and all that entails. no end of confusion for the end users.
  6. PST support
  7. Calendar view ability before excepting a meeting.
  8. Support for multiple calendar sync to iCal. For me this would be huge. Once these any others "laundry list" of improvements are done/worked on, what have you. Then focus on the "valued added stuff" Such as: the Art of office My Day Project Center, etc...
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    The OOF announcement is a very welcomed piece. 1)Please use flat files rather than the Entourage Database. With changes coming in Leopard, this is a big deal. Synching people's home directories (aka Time Machine) is very likely to cause a problem if the person is logged in.
  1. I echo the post requesting .pkg or .mpkg files. It's 2007 already. There's no benefit to using proprietary installers. In fact, as an enterprise administrator, It's nearly impossible to restrict the ViseX installers from running, but I sure can make sure Apple's "Installer" doesn't launch. This step would help us make sure we're within our licensing agreement. It would also help greatly in deploying/updating your products.
  2. Please allow customization - even if it's obscure (e.g. using Apple Dev tools to do so). When the message "your password is expiring.. see your administrator" comes up, guess who's phone rings. I'd rather be able to point them to the documentation in that message. That should be pretty straight forward if the message is written into the localization files in plain text.
  3. Voting would be nice, but really, 100% accurate calendaring is the most important thing.
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    Let's hope a beta is available soon. Agree with many posts regarding need for features which are standard for Outlook users: Read/receipt scheduling of resources (critical) ability to change password Sharepoint interconnectivity

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    Honestly, what a joke.  I appreciate your efforts, and I'm sure you work hard, but can anyone out there actually be pining for improved OOF support given all the other CRITICAL issues with Entourage?   You know what I love about Entourage connecting to Exchange- how the database daemon locks up every few hours, and I get to force quit Entourage and start again.  Seriously, it's a lot of fun.  You should try it.

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    Not to worried about OOF, I just want to make the next version of Office solved the single MS Database issue in regards to backups.  This is the most important issue to resolve.  The ever changing single database file forces a complete backup every day.  And for an average use with over 1 GB database file, this is a real problem.  Please fix this. Thank you.

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    I agree with the comments above that we need 100% Outlook functionality.  One feature I would include that has not been mentioned above is something equivalent to OL2003/2007 RPC over HTTP.  I work in a large company full of Outlook and Exchange users.  There are many of us who are home office and want to use our Entourage Clients outside of the firewall and yet still be able to connect to the Exchange server.  RPC over HTTP provides that functionality on Windows.  Outlook is the only reason I run VMware Fusion at this point.  Please, pretty please?   Thanks!!

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2007
    I'm a bit shy of mentioning this, since the rest of the world seems to be on Exchange, but: Our company uses the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino groupware. So I would like to know if there are any plans for a Domino integration other than just accessing mail via POP3/IMAP4? Be it from Mac BU, IBM (no, I do not expect any form of cooperation between two groupware rivals, even though I would love to see it) or a third party ISV?

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2007
    Over the coming months make sure to keep an eye on the Mac Mojo blog where they are releasing sneak peeks

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2007
    Server side rules editor. Server side rules editor. Server side rules editor. PLEASE!!!

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2007
    Make Entourage work like Outlook. Period. End of Story.

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2007

  1. request a Read receipt * THIS A MUST*
  2. Request a Delivery receipt
  3. Attach contacts in an easy way
  4. zip (archive) files when attaching
  5. optional attendees when scheduling meetngs
  6. A much better synchronisation of public folders
  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2007
    This is going do sound really trivial - but having colours on the calender sync between Outlook and Entourage.  Being the lone Mac user in a Windows Department, my boss colour codes appointments by colour - which I don't see.

  • Anonymous
    September 15, 2007
    Will Entourage 2008 support the IMAP IDLE command (RFC 2177)?

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2007
    Nice with OOF and all - but the main thing here is that you're actually sharing information. I think we all appreciate that.

  • Anonymous
    September 18, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 18, 2007
    Please, please, please tell me that Office 2008 includes Exchange resource scheduling from Entourage.  Mac users currently have to book meetings with OWA because Entourage won't let them claim a meeting room.  :)

  • Adam
  • Anonymous
    September 22, 2007
    Hey, wouldn't it be a neat idea to have OOF integration for popular POP based webmail accounts like Hotmail and Gmail, for those of us who have a 1 computer, self-employed set up? :) I knew you guys would like that one too. -D

  • Anonymous
    September 23, 2007
    With the current Entourage, although sent items appear in OWA sent items, for some reason, it does not appear in the sent items folder in the BlackBerry running BES. I believe this is because Enoturage sends the message using the local outbox as opposed to the Exchange mailbox. It would be good if this could be rectified so that you can view your sent items from the BlackBerry (using BES).

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2007
    I agree with a previous poster - make Entourage work like Outlook. Period. Don Montalvo, NYC

  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2007
    This is a nice little feature, but I'm nervous that there has been no Entourage 2008 screenshots.  Entourage needs lots of work -- I mean, we can't even make links in our emails and it takes weeks to delete or move lots of emails. And it's not even compatible with MS's winmail.dat from outlook. I would expect that with Thunderbird or something, but not from a Microsoft product that is billed as "Microsoft Office for Mac." But hopefully those sorts of things will be addressed. Otherwise, I'm moving to Apple Mail or Thunderbird.

  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2007
    Here are my suggestions, stop all of your work on all the other areas of office and focus on duplicating as much of everything that Outlook 2007 has for Entourage.  I think I can speak for everyone when I say we can all get by with what we have in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for now.  We all NEED a fully functional Outlook for the Mac.  Once you have Entourage figured out, then go back and continue the development of the rest of office, paying close attention to sharepoint integration. Anway here are my top requests: -Ability to recall messages -Ability to resend messages -Synch notes and Tasks -Side by Side comparison of co-workers calendars -Full HTML functionality in composing mail -Synch notes and Tasks (is this sinking in yet? -Attach contact cards in emails -optional Attendee request for meeting invites -Approve,Reject,Yes or No voting features -read write PST file support -As mentioned earlier, color labels do not come up in entourage, so when I add my Avis reservation, it shows in OWA and outlook but not on my mac, because Avis automatically color codes the event as baby blue travel. I appreciate what the MacBU is doing.  However, if a lot of the requests that have been repeated on this forum are not addressed or seen in the future release, I think we all deserve an explanation of why we shouldn't boycott purchasing the upgrade for our voices not being heard.

  • Anonymous
    October 06, 2007
    This is the sort of feature that makes me livid. No doubt, MBU folks are really excited about this, but, if you read the blog comments, we, the customers, want MS Outlook parity and ability to import and export to Outlook PST. Therefore, if these are out core needs, you can appreciate that hearing about these peripheral feature gets us really aggravated. It's as if you're not listening, and you're fixated on things that you regard as important -- but you customers are asking you just to focus on the core important things, rather than distracting toy features.

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2007
    It seems everyone wants a better Entourage. The rest of Office is fine, but Entourage needs to be improved. Maybe you guys could do a blog post about all the new features in Entourage so that we can all settle down. However, of Entourage is the same with just a couple little features like this tacked on, I don't think you'll find most of your users very happy. We've been waiting 4 years for an Entourage upgrade.

  • Anonymous
    October 14, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2007
    During the planning and development of Entourage 2008, I’ve had a chance to meet with many Mac Exchange

  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2007
    As a Mac user and an IT guy I don't want MAPI because I think I'm missing out.  I want it because WebDav is seriously f'ed up in Exchange Server.  You can read about it here: http://www.macwindows.com/041107d.html This has been a HUGE problem for us.  And despite the workaround listed in the link above we're still having major problems. "April 13, 2007 Several readers responded to Wednesday's article about large numbers of Entourage users degrading Exchange Server performance. After some testing, the author concluded that there is a problem with the way Microsoft implemented WevDAV. Several readers agreed, pointing to Microsoft knowledgebase articles and their own experience. Several readers also provide some techniques that help. One reader, however is not seeing the problem with 120 Entourage clients."

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2007
    Coming from Windows/Outlook 2007, I am pretty dissapointed with Entourage. No decent sync with exchange? Is this some sort of strategy to have people buy VirtualPC or Parallels with XP for roundabout 250 bucks and then run Outlook???   PLEASE make Entourage 2008 be able to sync categories, tasks and notes with exchange servers....PLEASE!

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2007
    not sure if it is in here or not (don't really want to read through the garbage just to give a solution) ... if you use outlook web access, you can set your "oof" message under the options tab. not exactly as easy as having it available in entourage, but it does work.

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2007
    so?  Will we be able to sync notes and tasks?

  • Anonymous
    October 26, 2007
    Will the layout of the Address Book be more like Office 2007 for Windows or will it remain basically the same?  Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2007
    All these questions and only ONE response? Huge +1 for dumping the perpetually corrupting single database file.

  • Anonymous
    November 02, 2007
    Entourage already has the RPC over HTTP functionality that you are looking for


Then please explain to me, the end user how I take the instructions for setting an RPC over HTTP connection using SSL, proxy servers, and a certificate to connect via webdav?  I can't for the life of me figure it out on my Mac with Mail, or Entourage 2004.  It works great with Outlook 2007 in Parallels (the only reason I need parallels). Please help.

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2007
    what's the story behind MAPI support in Entourage?

  • Anonymous
    December 12, 2007
    In my Calendar post , I touched on some of the work we’ve done in our Entourage 2008 reliability focus.

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2009
    I've been getting a lot of questions about the Entourage beta, so here's some answers.