Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

At the beginning of August I told you that we'd start communicating more about Office 2008 in September. Well, it's September, and I am back here on Mac Mojo to kick-off the next wave of information on Office 2008.

We know that there are many Mac Mojo readers out there that need to start planning Office 2008 deployment in their organizations. As we start to share information, we’ll focus on some information that will help you start thinking about your enterprise deployment alongside some deeper dives into some of the new features in Office 2008.

We have invested in Exchange support in Entourage for the past four years, and continue to do so in Office 2008. I think Entourage 2008 users in Exchange environments will find this the most reliable version to date - I have been living in daily builds of Entourage for over two months now, and I am delighted with the stability and reliability of our Exchange support and how well the calendar interoperates with my assistant, who uses Outlook.  

We’ve worked closely with enterprise customers to prioritize features and improvements in Entourage 2008. As well, we have established an unprecedented level of collaboration between the Entourage team and the Exchange team, and we will continue to invest in strengthening that relationship to ensure that future versions of Entourage work great with Exchange. We are committed to delivering a world class Exchange client that delivers on enterprise customer needs in Office 2008 and beyond.

But our enterprise investment doesn't end with Exchange support - you've seen us expand into Messenger for Mac support for Live Communications Server (now Office Communications Server). And while our development team is working fast and furiously on Office 2008, we've got product planners looking to the future and working closely with other teams at Microsoft to identify areas where we can connect Office for Mac into other enterprise level technologies. There isn't anything I can share on this today, but it's important for you to know that we are thinking just as hard about delivering on core enterprise needs as we are more end-user focused features.

Later today, you’ll see a post telling you all about what's new with OOF in Entourage 2008. And in the coming weeks and months, we'll share details on things like:

• Changes in the Entourage calendar
• Office 2008 installation and deployment options
• Entourage database improvements
• How Mac users can work with SharePoint
• Some of our security features in Office for Mac

For those of you looking forward to hearing and seeing more about Office 2008 feature updates and suite improvements - visit us here at Mac Mojo on September 18th for the first of our bi-weekly updates leading up to our RTM in mid-December.

I hope you will enjoy Office 2008 as much as we do - the whole BU is using Office 2008, with builds that get better every day. It’s been a monumental project for the team - I’m proud of the work they’ve done in Office 2008 and we can’t wait to get it into your hands in January.

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Looking forward!

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Is the Exchange support good enough that you no longer need a Windows machine/partition to handle internal Microsoft emails and tasks?

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Woo-hoo ! Some good news, come on guys how about some screenshots? Lets have a public beta, it worked out well for Office 2007.

• 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 it works with MICROSOFT'S ISA server configured with Exchange 2003 OWA configuration. Also, after 4 years (Office 2004) you guys are jazzed about OOF???

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Screenshots go a long way to explaining what will be in the new Entourage. I cannot express my dissapointment more by the lack of a screenshot for Entourage in the initial announcement in Januray. While I use Entourage daily I'm very tempted to switch to the Apple iApps due to the integration with the OS such as the dictionary, iPhoto, etc., etc. I have also been hoping Entourage would be overhauled at the interface level to offer more support for Apple GUI goodness but the MBU has been very coy about this and I'm very frustrated. I even tried to get myself enrolled in the user testing program (since I live in Kirkland Wa) and have never heard back from my request. I'm a fairly typical SOHO user and at this point I really need a screenshot of Entourage. How 'bout it?

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Should I ask why you need to "invest in strengthening that relationship" between the Entourage Team and the Exchange Team? You work at the same company right? Shouldn't they be required to work in concert with you completely and not have to be dependent on some sort of relationship-building? I mean if I need something for my job from another office in the company, I do not need to build a relationship with them to get what I need since one would assume it was part of their job to provide it. I have to wonder if this is not further evidence of the fact that MS has limited interest in giving Mac users a functional, compatible product. I mean shouldn't the Exchange team be working with you hand-in-hand on your project? Shouldn't the relationship be based on "that's your job"? And what is so magic about 9/18? Given the level of skepticism, why not let the cat out of the bag now and prove all of us nay-sayers and whiners wrong about the next version of office? You know what the feature set is. You know how frustrated people are over the delays. Having some sort of tortured drip-drip-drip bi-weekly roll-out of stuff seems like the wrong marketing tactic in this environment. It just makes for more waiting--exactly what has irritated the users who post on here. Seems to me you should get product planners focused on the project that is not even finished yet and get the marketing people to come up with a feature roll-out plan that reduces the frustrations of your users not exacerbates them. As a marketing person, I know that is what I would do...

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  When you say most reliable Exchange support so far, are you including the OS 9 only Outlook programs as well, or only versions of Entourage?

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Man, guys, lighten up on the MacBU up there!  They're Mac users working for us to make the products the best they can and I for one hope they'll take their time to get it right.  I'm not a fan boy and believe heathy criticism is a good thing, but let them get out of the shute before you pummel them! :0) To the MacBU, I look forward to seeing what you've got and thanks for starting this blog off to let us know "whatup"!

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  I had so much trouble with Entourage database corruption, that I am now running Outlook 2007 on Parallels in coherence mode. I keep my local PST for archival in the OSX filesystem. Seems to be working fine and I am having a much better experience. Plus I trust the PST over the Entourage DB. It feels safer and better supported. I just whacked Office 2004 and replaced it with iWork '08. Too bad Apple doesn't make an Entourage/Outlook replacement. Then I'd only need parallels for the odd IE session. Good luck with Office 2008 - you will have to do a lot of convincing.

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Does it have the ability to store groups on Exchange server 2007;  how about syncing notes and Category colors with Exchange?

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2007
  Public beta! Screen shots!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  I am happy to hear about these updates.  I have not heard any mention of .pst files.  As a PC convert, one of the biggest challenges i have is accessing older emails I have saved in various .pst's.  Will you support .pst files in Office 2008?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Are you going to fix the "groups" migration problem and allow groups on exchange to show up in entourage???

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Any news regarding (improved) support for right-to-left languages, like Hebrew and Arabic? This would be a great addition.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  While I too look forward to better Entourage/Exchange support, one killer feature that I truly hope is maintained in '08 is the voice recording feature in Word Notebook. I cannot count the number of times I have been on a conference call and used the record syncing feature of Word Notebook.  For those of us who do lots of meetings and conference calls, it's a life saver - and sleepy students probably get good use as well :). The only complaint I have about the MBU in this case is the lack of internal marketing you guys have done!  I do lots of meetings on the Redmond Campus and will sometimes get grumbles when I pull my Mac out.  But when I show them the Notebook audio time sync feature, they want to know where to buy one! While the ability 'kind of' exists in One Note, we Mac users have a much more integrated product with Word Notebook.  For managing meeting information and establishing "who said what"  Notebook can't be beat.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Please... if there is any way... please put the option in Entourage to use the Apple Address Book as the main contact source.  Thats the single most reason I currently don't use Entourage now. If this has already been addressed... then great.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  What would make Office compelling for me would be iLife integration. In Pages and Keynote it is SO easy to work with my photos, movies and audio resources, I hate having to prepare docs and slide shows in Office. Unless Office addresses the iLife issue, the way many other non-Apple apps have done, e.g. Boinx FotoMagico, it will be hard for me to see the need to upgrade. And I do appreciate the hard workers in the MacBU. They are on my side, I realize.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Question is, will Office 2008 work with EndNote X?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  I agree with everyone else supporting the idea of a public beta.  I participated in the closed beta of  Office 2007 for Windows, (before it went public). I had a great time hammering out bugs, and learning the new GUI.  Will you guys release a testing phase for Office 2008 for the Mac? Can't wait!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  My dream would be to be able to use the Entourage client w/o any changes to the Exchange server. Our Exchange servers are set up for Outlook clients only and they will not change any settings for us Mac users. It would be nice to have the current server settings and it "just worked" with Entourage. That aside, thanks for all your hard work! CJ

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Is there going to be a native support for Entourage & Windows Mobile Syncing?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Dear Microsoft MacBU, May I make a request that will help a lot of Mac and PC users, could you p-p-p-p-p-p-p-please make a SIMPLE migration utility that will (correctly) convert e-mails, contacts, multiple adress books, calendars, etc from Outlook to Entourage AND vice-versa? The closest utility I've found to be somewhat successful in doing so is Outlook2Mac from Little Machines. Unfortunately, this peace of software (1) did not come from Microsoft and (2) does not support accentuated lettres (as if the world only spoke English!!). They also have no intention of doing so (accents), and I thought who better to make such a utility than the people who created both programs... I beg of you, make y dream come true!! (Oh, the Windows Mobile syncing is a really good idea too)

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  How about a public beta?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Public Beta. Public Beta. Public Beta.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  I would love to be able to see subscribed calendars in Entourage side by side and not be forced to see them one by one.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Yikes, I see in your comments you'll be showing up the "improved" Entourage database--meaning it still has one!! One of my biggest complaints about Entourage is that is uses a DB.  Keep that stuff on the server (like Outlook) where it belongs!!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  We welcome the news.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Well, honestly, I just couldn't care less since I just moved my mail, calendar and contact business over to the Apple iApps. With growing databse size, Entourage got increasingly unstable and there was no way I would wait for 2008. Good luck with Office 2008 though.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  What? No screenshots? I don't know if sneak peek is exactly appropriate. http://answers.nobosh.com

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Please treat & respect your clients (Mac Office Users), in the same fashion that Office 2007 for Windows Users received. In that I mean why would there not be a Public Beta for us. Please do the right thing and let us see & feel it. Why not strive for a fantastic launch by letting those in the real everyday world help you get it ready for prime-time? Thanks

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Yeah. I can't wait. This is very exciting! :)

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Great . . . look forward to the previews.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Enterprise, enterprise, enterprise, enterprise, enterprise, enterprise. That's how many times that word comes up. Next time you give a sneak peek kick-off, remember to give everyone something to talk about, appreciate, admire. Office already has a bad reputation with end-users, so if you want to improve that, address them up front. Make us a priority for a change.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
   I cannot over-emphasize that you really need to support VBA in Office for Mac. Soon. I have purchased this software for my office in all its versions since 1992 or so. But lack of support for VBA is a deal-breaker.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Please carry over the Windows version's options available with "Send to Word."  I love using the Notes section in PowerPoint, but hate that I can only put one page of notes with each slide.  I need to be able to print my notes in larger font sizes which means my notes always run onto additional pages for a single slide. Please either allow more than one page of notes per slide or add this feature so that I can see my notes clearly with a quick glance when giving presentations!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  "I have been living in daily builds of Entourage for over two months now, and I am delighted with the stability and reliability of our Exchange support and how well the calendar interoperates with my assistant, who uses Outlook." With all due respect, Craig, I just simply do not believe that this is a true statement.  At the very least, please qualify this and explain whether the delegation and permissions were set up using Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008.   To be a "world class Exchange client" I expect that these issues with Entourage 2004 have been fixed?  1. The ability to set up server-side Distribution Lists & Rules.  2. Adding resources to a Calendar Event.  3. Consistently receiving updates and cancelations to Calendar Events without having to use OWA.  4. Setting invitees as Optional when sending Calendar Events.  5. The ability to see individual free/busy time when inviting a Distribution List to a Calendar Event.  6. Voting buttons.  7. Receipt tracking.  8. The option to opt out of sending a read receipt.  9. "Recover Deleted Items".  10.Hyperlinks displaying properly in HTML emails.  11.Rich Text Formatting for composing mail.  12.Recalling a message.  13.Opening a recalled message should clear out the original message to-be-recalled.  14.Expanding a Distribution List to selectively remove recipients.  15.Kerberos support.  16.The ability for a Delegate of mine to delete mail from my Inbox.  17.Ability to migrate PSTs. For Pete's sake, the Entourage blog indicates that WebDAV is "de-emphasized" and that Exchange Server 2007 has to be hacked to be able to support this "legacy" service.  Are you seriously going to release a brand new product that relies on de-emphasized, legacy services?  (http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/08/entourage_requires_legacy_applications_software_for_function.html) Many organizations, like ours, are considering not upgrading to Office 2008 in favor of a combination of iWork and VMware/XP/Office2007; it's cheaper and offers true compatibility. What will you do to convince us otherwise?

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Great effort to you guys at MBU. I would REALLY appreciate integration with SHAREPOINT services. But I don't see how you could work your way with Safari as browser that could be able to collaborate with the SharePoint webpages. Our company relies heavily in SharePoint for operations and financial controls and communications. Good Luck and keep us posted!

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Hi, will it be possible to use the outlook .pst file on the new mac outlook/entourage version ? This would one of the most important things to do. Thanks and best regards Ralf

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2007
  Yawn Mac Office 2008 is so last year.  All the cool people have moved over to iWork and NeoOffice.  Sorry, Microsoft, too many unkept promises.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  What are the reasons why MacBU doesn't dump Entourage and just port Outlook to OS X? As a software developer myself I fully understand the enormous implications of the phrase "just port", but even so, can't you give us Mac Outlook?

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  I've given up running Entourage and Outlook (in Coherence mode) in lieu of Mail.app.  I'm that sick of both MS offerings that I'm willing to put up with the pain and suffering of Mail.app and Groupcal. I'm begging you, MacBU...WOW ME.  Consider that Leopard is poised to be one of the best operating systems out there and make Office 2008 equally as impressive. Keep your screenshots and focus on giving us a good beta to chew on, guys.  Remember, you are the developers and have the callouses required to forgive any existing shortcomings...let your end-users help to make the final version truly great. While I'm in the wishing mode - how about a nod to the iPhone community in the form of synchronization tools for tasks, notes, contacts, and calendar items?  

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  Hmm...how 'bout something for us students who use Office - .MHT compatibility for when we have profs who insist on using this format to post lectures and other notes we're supposed to read for upcoming classes?  Just a suggestion.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  Its very nice to see that you are working in office 2008 but its not only entourage (which I find very good), one of the major blowbacks is the pivot tables function which is more advanced in the windows version and has more functions, I will want to see that in excel, also an improvement in speed, I have a brand new macbook and office is as fast as is in my old imac, which is not good.  There is also a petition, please dont copy the menus of office 2007, they are quite bad and you never find what you are looking for.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  There seems to be a lot of comments here that are focused on consumer/ individual features. Unfortunately the main audience for Office is going to be in "Enterprise" (I hate that word). With that being said, I think at this point, Microsoft needs to do one of two things when it comes to Entourage.

1. As I don't see it to be a realistic goal to create a "true MAPI" client that can just be bolted onto Entourage, and then somehow magically have all of Entourage's features "just work" with Exchange, I think it is time to put Entourage to bed, and start over from the begining. This does not mean going back to the OS 9 Outlook for Mac and trying to port that ancient code over either. Time to build from the ground up, a True MAPI based Mac email client. Really, this would be everything you are currently trying to kludge onto Entourage 2008 via what the Exchange team considers de-emphasized services.
2. Since I think the possibility of number 1 happening, are about even with Apple fully embracing enterprise, I think the most logical thing for the MacBU to be pushing for is Microsoft to open the API for MAPI to outside developers. I really believe that either a small company with a few exceptionally bright programmers, or the FOSS community, could come up with a very worthy Mac MAPI client. Something I just don't believe that can come out of MS given the internal politics, sorry "relationship building", and design by committee that seems to go on with Entourage. The has been how many years in the making, and how many man hours put into Entourage, and one of the features that is being touted, is OOF? Your kidding me right? A great "feature" you should have been working on is any number of the laundry list of issues that jough mentioned above. With that being said, I think that Exchange has a ton of features that MAYBE 25% of the installations use. Giving Entourage basic access to exchange that is on par with Outlook would be a huge feature (this goes back to making it a true MAPI client, and not just trying to emulate the Outlook features using WebDAV. The best case in point. For some reason, you have the "remove attachment" feature enabled on Entourage 2004 when connected to an Exchange server. The problem with this is, it only deletes the attachment in the local sync'd message, and that does not propagate back to the users account on exchange. So if they have received several huge messages, and delete the attachments, but keep the messages, they are fooled into thinking that they have reduced their mailbox size on the server (where it really matters more), but they really haven't and there is NO warning about this. That is just another BAD implementation of a feature on the Mac side. At the very least, could you disable that feature when working on an exchange account (much like Redirect is disabled when working with an Exchange account), is it really that much to ask? I think a wider Beta test, maybe not a Public beta, should be in order. Especially for those of us who support Entourage in a number of different environments. Those os us who support business (sorry "Enterprise") don't want Exchange support, we want a Mac native Exchange client. Period.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  Allow me to echo a few prior comments/requirements:

1. Sync services with the new iPhone (Yes, Apple you need to support Exchange seamlessly and yes, Entourage is better than iCal/Mail).  Exchange, iPhone and Entourage need to work together.
2.  The ability to archive messages on the Exchange server to the local machine without setting up custom rules.
3.  The ability to set up server-side Distribution Lists & Rules.
4. Adding resources to a Calendar Event.
5. Consistently receiving updates and cancelations to Calendar Events without having to use OWA.
6. Setting invitees as Optional when sending Calendar Events.
7. The ability to see individual free/busy time when inviting a Distribution List to a Calendar Event.
8. Voting buttons.
9. Receipt tracking.
10. The option to opt out of sending a read receipt.
11. "Recover Deleted Items". 12 .Hyperlinks displaying properly in HTML emails.
12. Recalling a message.
13. Opening a recalled message should clear out the original message to-be-recalled.
14. Expanding a Distribution List to selectively remove recipients.
15. The ability for a Delegate of mine to delete mail from my Inbox.
16.  Entourage Project integration with SharePoint
17.  Improved database (I have 2,418; 1,415 e-mails on the server; local contacts...it crashes a lot)
18.  Full .DocX support Do this and you shall ROCK!

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2007
  I have been waiting for Office 2008 for too long and need to make a move.  Our organization will be moving to iWork, as we can get a multi-thousand site license for penny's on the dollar.  I love Office, but can't wait until December.

• Anonymous
  September 08, 2007
  How long do we wait for a Mac version of MS Access?

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2007
  Is there support of Russian spell checker in Office 2008?

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  And how about syncing tasks with the server? Another basic feature that has been overlooked...

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 11, 2007
  Please,

1. Full Exchange support in Entourage,
2. Address Book and iLife integration, and obviously
3. PUBLIC BETA & SCREENSHOTS! :) Restore some of our faith, you seem to be doing great work.

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2007
  I sure hope the Entourage database is robust enough to handle my mail archives this time around -- Entourage 2004 ate 12 gigabytes of my mail last year. If it weren't for backups, I wouldn't have been able to salvage everything and dump it into the more reliable (and standard) MBOX format. I sure hope Entourage can dump mail to multiple databases a la Outlook 2001 for OS9.

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2007
  Has you decided what editions of Office 2008 you will be releasing Mac? Will there be an affordable 'Home' edition, like there is in Windows Office 2007?

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2007
  PLEASE SYNC WITH I-PHONE! I don't care how you do it, just do it! ...through I-sync (plugin/software update with apple) ...through ported ActiveSync for i-phone Everyone I know that has an i-phone is depending on the next generation of office for mac/exchange server to come up with a simple, easy way to sink. Thanks!!!

• Anonymous
  September 24, 2007
  Excel needs unlimited rows, a million is not enough in the "real world"... If x-spread can do it for free, why can't micro$oft do it for money? lets stop the OS wars and get to work! anything else is un-American.

• Anonymous
  September 25, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 25, 2007
  ppp     ppp          sssss   ttttttttttttttt ppp   ppppp    sss                 ttttt pppp       ppp  sss                  ttttt ppp         ppp     sssss           ttttt ppp         ppp           ssss       ttttt ppp     ppp                ssss      ttttt ppppppp                  ssss      ttttt ppp                           ssss      ttttt ppp                         ssss        ttttt ppp                     ssssss         ttttt

• Anonymous
  October 02, 2007
  First, I honestly want to thank the MBU for Office 2004, because it made my migration from PC to MAC three years ago so much easier.  I don’t know that I could have possibly jumped from PC/Outlook to Mail/AddressBook/iCal in my “mostly PC” corporate environment without that tool.  I’m looking forward to Office 2008. Archiving:

• Obviously, as requested elsewhere throughout this thread the ability to import/export .pst files interoperable with Outlook, versus .pst files, would be exceedingly, overwhelmingly beyond wonderful (and so obvious as to lead one to ask why this even needs to be a topic for consideration).
• More specifically, I would like the ability to create archives of specific sections of my Entourage database, (like specific folders from my mailbox or specific Contact or Calendar categories), rather than having to archive the entire Entourage database each time I want to create an archive.  If I recall (its been a long time), Outlook allows you to select specifically what data/folder(s) you want to create an archive of. I’ve never found that ability in Entourage (with the exception of being able to export my entire contacts database as a single file). Seamless Syncing with my iPhone:  
• Currently, I have to set up syncing between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook, and the result has been more or less a nightmare.  Duplication of all day events in my calendars, duplication of contacts in Entourage and my Address Book, and even contact/AddressBook “data mixing”, (which I can only describe as taking the phone number of one contact and populating that number into other contacts, etc.)  After one iPhone sync, my 1100 contacts were turned into more than 9000 contacts!  Absolute nightmare, anything to improve this would be wonderful. Better Syncing between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook:
• By the way, the iPhone problem above isn’t limited to just when I’m syncing the phone.  Having first enabled syncing between Entourage and iCal/Address Book when I got the iPhone, the problems mentioned above happen when I’ve got syncing turned on between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook – regardless of whether or not I am actually doing an iPhone Sync.  It is great to have the syncing functionality, but it needs to work without destroying my data. Checking for duplicate entries, merging duplicates.
• For those nightmare occasions when everything does get duplicated in my calendar or contact database, the ability to run a quick “check for duplicates” (such as offered in Apple’s Address Book) would be nice.   Dragging/Dropping Email messages into Calendar to establish a new event or reminder.
• Loved the ability to do this in Outlook.  I know there is a script for this in Entourage today, I use it every day, but dragging and dropping from my inbox to the Calendar icon to launch this functionality is just so much easier. Establishing a group calendar event/invitee list from a new Mail message.
• Frequently I find myself writing an email, or responding to one, and figure out mid-way through composing that I want to invite several people to a meeting to discuss the topic of the email message.  What happens with Entourage now is that I have to get out of my email, open a new calendar event, and invite attendees to that event.  What I would like to do is copy everyone that I want at the meeting directly from the email I am composing, and open a calendar “invite” event that the recipient list can then respond to in a manner that blocks their calendars (exactly as if I were setting up the meeting from Calendar and inviting attendees).   I know that right now I can link the email to a new or existing calendar event, but that doesn’t seem to accomplish the same thing from the standpoint of inviting attendees and having their acceptance of the meeting blocked on their own Calendars.

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2007
  The comment has been removed