Microsoft's Entourage now has an update to allow it work wi...

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: Microsoft's Entourage now has an update to allow it work with MS's own Exchange Server. (http://macnn.com/news/20463)

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

[redAPPLE]

too little, too late?

now that Panther (Mail) would also support Exchange servers...

[dukemeiser]

I thought this sounded pretty fishy, considering Panther will support Exchange too. Is Microsloth trying to downplay Panther with this update? Or is it just coincidence?

[eric_n_dfw]

MS said this was comming long before people knew Panther would support it. Besides, from one of the screen shots from Panther, I suspect that it's Exchange support will use Exchange's web access on the back end - not a direct connection to the Exchange server. (Then again, maybe that's what MS is doing too!)

In case that didn't make sense:

Windows and Mac OS 9 users:
MS Office connects directly to MS Exchange server.

Web access version (like what Snerdware's AddressX app does):
Application connects to http(s) Exchange web server. Web serves up html mail box, application "screen scrapes" responses and provides a pop/imap interface to Mail. (Now, MS may be providing an XML interface on that http(s) port but I doubt it.

[eric_n_dfw]

Just installed it - account wizard didn't find our Exchange server so I tried manual config. Still getting problems... :rolleyes:

[JohnHummel]

So, here's what I'm seeing so far:

1. If I type in the domain name and all the other good bits I put into the MS Outlook for OS 9 client - it doesn't connect.

2. So, I click "manual setup". It asks for the Exchange server address - I give it. It <i>then</i> tells me it needs an SMTP server address.

Uh-oh. See, I work at a security place (*please* don't ask why we use Exchange - it was *not* my idea) and we've pretty much disabled SMTP for everything so that, in theory, we won't get spam mail bombed and such.

So I put one in anyway, knowing the SMTP part won't work. And then it gives me the error that I saw coming a mile away:

IMAP folder error, blah, blah, blah.

See, it *looks* like to me that this isn't a 100% "hey, kids - let's talk to an Exchange server all nice and happy in the native way!". It's the "So - you Mac jackasses felt like you needed Keynote, huh? Well, here's your prescious Exchange support - we'll hook up the Calender and crap, but if you think we were going to use anything other than a basic auto-configured IMAP and SMTP service system - you were wrong! Bwahaha! Bwahahahahaha!"

I'm sure I'm wrong on some levels, but I am very dissapointed in this so-called Exchange Server compatibility. My old crappy Outlook for OS 9 works fine enough - so how hard would it have been to get Entourage to really, truly integrate with Exchange?

So - fine. I'll wait for Panther (it's version of Mail is suppose to be Exchange compatible - maybe I'll give it a shot) and push the company to use some other mail server in the future. (Anybody know if Lotus Domino has a Mac client? And no - not a web one, I can't stand those things.)

Oh - and now that Novell has bought Evolution, let me say one thing: Mac OS X port, you Utah assmunches. (I lived there for 10 years - I've earned the right to say that.)

[phi1281]

This is just a lame lame update. If I was interested in using IMAP with Exchange I would stick with Mail.

This is just another pathetic atempt to calm the Mac user contingent. There's five minutes I'll never get back thanks to MS.

[dswoodley]

Originally posted by phi1281
This is just a lame lame update. If I was interested in using IMAP with Exchange I would stick with Mail.

This is just another pathetic atempt to calm the Mac user contingent. There's five minutes I'll never get back thanks to MS.

Microsoft, you've failed me again! God**** it!! Why did they even bother?

[neilt]

What we needed:
the ability for an adminstrative assistant to open and view the manager's schedule.

What we got:
…

I could do everthing that this update provides already. It is time to look into a different solution for our enterprise scheduling software.

neilt

[Foocha]

Hi JohnHummel

I can tell your for a fact that you're not going to like Domino - their Notes client for Mac OS X sucks even more than their Notes for Windows client.

For reasons I won't go into, I have to use both Notes and Exchange. Exchange with Outlook on Windows is great. I was looking forward to something similar on Mac OS X - it doesn't appear to be the case.

I'm having the same problem with Entourage not seeing our exchange server, even though it has service pack 3.

Hmm.

[CitrusScent]

This really sucks. Just installed it, and configured and it's working fine, however, it's nothing different than the IMAP access as before. I was really hoping that I would have Tasks and Notes synchronizing up to the server and REAL exchange interaction. Having the Calendar synch up is the only real addition here.

[dswoodley]

Originally posted by neilt
What we needed:
the ability for an adminstrative assistant to open and view the manager's schedule.

What we got:
…

I could do everthing that this update provides already. It is time to look into a different solution for our enterprise scheduling software.

neilt

What infuriates me the most is that MS proclaimed a "full Excahnge Solution" was coming way back in February. I told my fellow staff to be patient - soon our problems would be solved. And what did Microsoft deliver? - nothing!!! I could have spent the last few months researching a real solution!

[Balin64]

What the heck? I have never moved the Office X folder from my Apps folder and this is what I get:

What a useless "update." As you can see, the Office X folder is in my Apps folder. What the hell have the engineers at the Mac BU doing all these months?!!!

[Balin64]

Here's What I mean.

[dswoodley]

Originally posted by Balin64
Here's What I mean.

Just out of curiousity you do have the vX.1.2 version installed at least, right?

[Balin64]

Originally posted by dswoodley
Just out of curiousity you do have the vX.1.2 version installed at least, right?

Yes, I do. I have installed the previous updates they have made available. I really have no use for Exchange (and if I do in the future I will use Panther's Mail) but I was hoping they had fixed crash-happy MS Word. Oh well.

[joost538]

I could not get the update to install either: cannot find the application folder. Maybe because I've renamed Macintosh HD?

I checked to see what they did to update Word: they only fixed a bug importing nested tables. So it's not useful for me anyway.

[JimmyMac]

I'm having the same trouble here. I've followed MS's instructions to remove the Component Plugin file, but that didn't work.

When I try and point the installer to the Office X folder, the window that pops up is blank. My folder is in the default location.

I also tried downloading the updater file again.

What a disappointment.

I am confused about something though. Why do I need this for Exchange email? I already can do email on my company's Exchange server by setting it up as a POP account. Am I missing something here?

[fatfish]

Just out of curiosity, why do you guys use office at all?

[wjdennen]

Why do you need this to read mail on Exchange?

Good question. Some Exchange servers are configured to do IMAP and/or POP, in addition to the native MAPI protocol.

So, if yours does IMAP or POP, you can probably get away with using just a regular old mail client. But, if it does MAPI only, then you need Outlook or some other Exchange-native client.

Finally, if yo uwant to do calendaring, POP isn't going to be good enough. You need a mail client that knows about Exchange calendaring.

[Balin64]

Allright:

The only way I was able to get the installer to work was to delete all remnants of Office X, restart for good measure, then install from the CD, run these updates in order: SR1, Update 10.1.2. THEN this installer worked. I did not bother with 10.1.3 because it has to do with Italian language support if I recall correctly.

I have to use Office because it in the default at my work place. They all use PC's there and I am the only one with a Mac. I told them Appleworks would work, but the idiot IT consultant convinced my employer that I HAD to run the Microsoft office suite or else our Windows Server 2000 machine might have "problems" handling appleworks back ups. Can you guys believe that? so I am required to use it on my iBook. Oh well, it updated to current version, and the first time I opened Word it promptly crashed when I tried to "save as." Oh well, same piece of caca.

[neilt]

Originally posted by wjdennen
Finally, if yo uwant to do calendaring, POP isn't going to be good enough. You need a mail client that knows about Exchange calendaring.

true, but if you could get your mail via pop before, entourage knew what to do with the calendar invites and it added them automatically to your calendar anyway. This doesn't really provide any new abilities other than how it gets the information.

neilt

[Decimal Dave]

I originally tried to set this up using the account wizard, but kept getting the IMAP server/port errors that other people mentioned. According to our admin, both IMAP and POP3 support are disabled on our Exchange server for security reasons. After tinkering with some of the settings, I discovered that the domain was set to the server address (which was incorrect). So...I set the domain field to the prefix of the search domain in the network system preferences. Now everything works fine. All of my mail is there, contacts, calendar, etc. Only my signatures seem to be lost in the conversion.

[wjdennen]

This update is also supposed to allow Entourage users to see other Exchange users' free/busy time and availability. This is not something that Entourage could do before.

[neilt]

Originally posted by wjdennen
This update is also supposed to allow Entourage users to see other Exchange users' free/busy time and availability. This is not something that Entourage could do before.

And if someone could get me directions on how to do this with a default configured instalation of exchange 2000 I would really appreciate it.....

[Analog Kid]

How wonderful!

Just trashed my mail database, and refuses to rebuild... How loverly. Also refuses to launch, which is kinda cool too.

They've actually managed to make Entourage worse than it was! I'm amazed.

Oh wait. Now it doesn't launch at all, so in a way that's making it better...

"Oh Analog Kid, you're being too hard on Microsoft-- the MacBU is a bunch of Mac-ies just like us", "Oh Analog Kid, if Apple put out a piece of trash like Entourage, you'd be giving it high praise!".

No, I wasn't being paranoid. I was learning from experience, but apparently not learning enough to avoid the install completely.

So, dear friends, what's the theory on this f*up? Here's mine: They want to drop support for Office, but if they just pull support then everyone cries foul. Sooo.... You make big press releases about full Exchange support, trash peoples machines and productivity right before Apple goes native with Exchange and when people start skeet shooting their Office CDs you throw up your hands because Office sales are dropping even after you've put in truck loads of work implementing your own MAPI interface in your own proprietary mailer and talk about religious differences, shrinking market share and how hard it is to compete when applications are bundled with the OS.

I won't be called paranoid again. This is absurd. Free update can only mean one thing-- virus.

[XForge]

"Any contacts that are stored in folders other than the top-level Outlook Contacts folder will not be synchronized with Entourage."

In other words, the entire corporate global email address book is off limits to you because you want to read your email in OS X on a Mac. The only email addresses I can see from Entourage are the ones in my "Personal" folder. That's utter bullcrap.

OTOH the calendar synced right up. Yay for small fricking favors.

Call me when you bloody get it right, Microsoft. Or better still, I'll wait for the exchange-client modifications in Panther... and I'm seriously considering putting OpenOffice on all ten of the Macs in this workgroup. M$ can kiss my hairy white keister.

Mad? Moi? Why would I be mad??? grin

[rastalin94]

From what I remember when they first mentioned this a few months ago it was simply going to be an imap and Ldap lookup addon for OS X. Big deal. What we need is a full MAPI client for OS X. MAPI is how outlook connects to Exchange, and untill there is a full fledged MAPI client for OS X everything else will just be a half a$$ed hack.

[Compufix]

I believe the email is in imap format and the free/busy is actually using Webdave, since you need webdave support turned on. I have this installed and working and I can see free/busy stuff, we already had imap on and webdav is on by default.

check out www.snerdware.com

They are coming out with some great Exchange integration tools. This combined with the built in Exchange support that we have been reading about might be a solution....especially if I can get mail.app to see my appointments and get them over to iCal, using the snerdware software. They already have software that is free and syncs your address book with the Exchange GAL...works rather nicely.


-Mike

[Analog Kid]

All I really want in 10.1.5 is threads...

Just a few threads-- I don't want to push it.

Spinning beach balls in an email client on a 1GHz CPU should be an embarassment...

[danielgrenell]

tells me i don't have office.

[redAPPLE]

is there a feedback page, where we could "vent" our anger or in other words, further bugs?

[ncollingridge]

Feedback? You've got it - just look under the Help menu in Entourage.

[ncollingridge]

Here's what I said to Microsoft on the feedback page:

I am grossly disappointed that the promised "Exchange Integration" in the new 10.1.4 update for Entourage is so compromised. Why is there no native MAPI support and such limited functionality when compared with either Outlook on Windows or even Outlook 2001 on the Mac. This is a seriously bad mistake on Microsoft's part and makes it clear yet again why they are not to be trusted as a company. My opinion of Microsoft had definitely gone up when I heard about the upcoming support for Exchange in Entourage - now it's hit an even lower low than before, if that were possible. Does the phrase "Anti-trust" still not have any impact at all within Microsoft?? The other phrase that applies is "cynical in the extreme".

Feel free to select any parts of the above for your response!

[taeclee99]

Here are my impressions.

Pro's

-works as advertised...true exchange integration.

-don't have to boot into classic to use outlook 2001


Cons

- does not support use of PST files

- cannot view entire Global address list at once...can only do queries against the GAL.

Conclusion

This is a serious step backwards from the old outlook 2001. At least it had a real viewable GAL and allowed PST usage.
I sincerely hope that MS fixes these problems in a future release.

[jfruh]

Is there a list of the improvements in this update that don't involve Entourage? I don't use Entourage (and thank goodness, based on the other comments in this forum), so I was curious as to whether downloading this update would be worthwhile.

jf

[JJTiger1]

Good Morning;
I have been using Office X for about a year. Updated to SR 1 and 10.1.1.
-
My complaint is that Word is slow to print from the QuickSilver 733 to an old Apple IIg laserwriter. Slow compared to Word 98 in OS 9.2.2 on the same computer.

The laserwriter has it's max 32meg memory. The laserwriter is attached via ethernet switch. Another Mac, a 6500/250 upgraded to G3-400 uses the printer, hence the switch. Simple.

There is no other networking. Nada, no DSL, no peaseas, no Novell, nada.
=-=
Has anyone who has updated to 10.1.4 noticed any printing speed improvement?
=-=
Thanks in advance.
-
JJ

[nspeds]

This is really f*'d up.

It CANT FIND MY OFFICE DIRECTORY:mad:

Any fixes?

[scan300]

Well it wasn't too difficult to get up and running, though I had the initial problem of not updating to 10.1.2 first.

I was surprised by the requirement for an SMTP server address and did get the IMAP error. But everything ended up working, mail, calendar polling, global address book, public folders etc.

It's now supposed to have html rendering, though I haven't received any html emails. I expect this to work as it's a native feature of Entourage and not of Outlook Exchange client.

I've only had a quick squiz so no doubt the real problems will surface over the next few days.

[Valhalla525]

Originally posted by JimmyMac

When I try and point the installer to the Office X folder, the window that pops up is blank. My folder is in the default location.


I am confused about something though. Why do I need this for Exchange email? I already can do email on my company's Exchange server by setting it up as a POP account. Am I missing something here?

It sounds like you need to re-run the 10.1.2 updater for Office. WHy? DUnno. I got the same thing, even though I'd installed both the 10.1.2 and 10.1.3 updaters. I re-ran the 10.1.2 updater, and then the 10.1.4 updater worked just fine. Worth a shot, anyway.

As for why to use this for Exchange? Well, in theory it would allow you to access the Calendar and Contacts listings, Exchange Address Book, etc. But....

...In reality, the new update of Exchange actually only semi-adds these features. How do I mean? Accessing anyone in my Contacts folder shows them as junk E-mails, from me to me, about the person in question. It wants to filter them as junk E-mail.

...Also, the Calendar shows up only as a laundry list of PAST Calendar events, and doesn't allow me to see any future events on the Calendar. It used to show me an actual calendar, with events and significant dates highlighted. Not any more.

So, the real question is this: what in the #$@! have Microsoft's programmers REALLY been doing with the last several months? If I was the manager overseeing their project, I'd have a serious talk with them about "goofing off on the job", and I'd start demanding progress reports from them on at least a weekly basis. This is by far the shoddiest work I've seen come out of Microsoft, bar none.

Valhalla525

[pretentious]

Originally posted by Valhalla525
This is by far the shoddiest work I've seen come out of Microsoft, bar none.

Now I don't use Office so I wouldn't know first-hand just how bad this is...but this is one hell of a statement on Microsoft and their long tradition of shoddy software. :D

[Valhalla525]

Originally posted by pretentious
Now I don't use Office so I wouldn't know first-hand just how bad this is...but this is one hell of a statement on Microsoft and their long tradition of shoddy software. :D

Why yes, it is. ;)

Of course, I'm referring specifically to the "promised"/"delivered" comparison.

Valhalla525

[texas2001]

The Exchange update worked flawless for me. I can connect to work, via PPTP and connect to our Exchange servers. Entourage sees my calendar (past and future) and all my sub-folders. Don't know if any rules work though.

The account wizard found my settings with no problem.

Hope everyone else has better luck.

[redAPPLE]

i haven't installed the update (yet)...

i know a lot of us here <shock>including i myself </shock> use office v. X.

maybe not because we choose to, but because we had to.

where do you guys expect to find the money to give Apple anyway :p

i read this thread and i myself am confused. does it work or does it not?

i must admit, i did not read what m$ had to say about it.

i really hope it works, naturally, until Apple delivers Panther...

now to something off topic, is there a way to sync my entourage/outlook (pc) contacts with Address book?

this is one of the very few reasons i use outlook (pc).

there is an outlook for mac, right? does that not do exchange stuff?

[scan300]

I have a feeling that the way individual Exchange servers are set-up have a lot to do with the patchy outcomes posted here.

We have perfect set-ups which auto configure all the way down to trashed mailboxes.

I fall somewhere in-between. I know there is a difference in how a Mac accesses Exchange to how Windows accesses Exchange. We had a problem a while back where our Mac clients couldn't connect all of a sudden, but the PCs could. There were no problems with the Mac client apps and we could connect to a mirrored server. After 6 months of Redmond working on the problem, it turned out they found the permissions on the server were corrupted. Resetting the permissions allowed us to connect again.

[redAPPLE]

i somehow was able to connect to our exchange server.

but!

could u guys tell me how it shows the contacts?

i see "my contacts" as email messages. it does not go to the Address Book (pc= Contacts folder).

would appreciate any comment. thx.