Outlook for Mac 2011 vs Mail - Which is better?

[BornAgainMac]

Originally Posted by propower

What I hate about Mac MAil is that if you do formatting in "rich text" the results for any non-mac recipients is unpredictable. Fonts will be different, font size will change unexpectedly and YOU will have no idea it is happening. If you copy and paste things into email it gets worse with "attributes" sticking from the source and if you have a signature worse still.......

I have been searching all morning for solutions and only find confirmation that these issues are real and have existed for a long time...........

Very true. I have had some really nice emails formatted like crap on the other side.

[Dal123]

I like outlook 2011 for mac for organizing projects it is a proper piece of software. Unlike mac mail which is just an emailing application.

[tivoboy]

Originally Posted by iFoggy

Hi,

Read with great interest this thread because I have bounced between Outlook and Mail / iCal for ages now.

My biggest problem with iCAL living in a Corporate Windows world was whenever I forwarded an existing meeting request in iCAL a mail with a .ICS file would be sent to the Windows Outlook client, it would be received as a mail and not a meeting request and when they double clicked the .ICS it would not insert the meeting into their Exchange calendar, it would go into a local Calendar.

If anyone has a solution for this I would be grateful...1st off a Windows Outlook user receiving an invite within a mail is a problem for them and 2nd the ICS files does not create the Calendar item in their default Calendar.

Thanks

yes, I would also really like an answer to this one. I sent out some meeting requests from ical, but they are only delivered to outlook (pc) users as attachments. I'd much rather have an actual meeting request sent. Is there ANY way to affect this?

Also, when I sent a meeting request from ical, it always goes out from my mobileme account, which I really don't want. Is there ANY way to change the sending email address?

[lnferno]

In Outlook, when accepting a meeting invitation, there's the options to accept without sending a response, accept with sending a response, and accept with customizing a response. Is there a way to do it in iCal? I didn't see it, but I certainly could have missed it.

[windowstomac]

I use hosted Exchange. For mail I am more than happy with Mail, and I am a long term Outlook user, however I don't feel that iCal is a substitue for the calendar functionality for power users.

I have a Windows 7 VM on my machine and one of the main things I use it for is entering appointments and tasks in PC Outlook.

[pwcarr11]

Hi,

We are in the same boat. Were you able to make a sound decision?

What direction did you go and why.

Really appreciate it as I am struggling of how to keep everything organized between multiple emails, ICal or Calendar for outlook (which does not syn with apple devises) etc etc etc.

Peter Carruth - President & COO |
2009 V Street | Suite 207 | Sacramento, CA 95818
A world you can’t predict demands a telecom advisor you can trust
Strato Communications – Providing mission critical voice, IP and transport solutions to the Cloud
www.stratocommunications.com

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Originally Posted by thetruereview

Hey guys,

This is my first post to MacRumors. I've done a search on the forum & couldn't really find a definitive discussion thread on this issue, so please forgive me if it's been well discussed.

I have have a couple of small businesses (sole operator) and use Macs only. By extension, I use the Mac applications ⇒ Mail, iCal, Address Book. I upgraded my MS Office for Mac software to the 2011 business version which includes Outlook. Having used Outlook for PC in my previous life as a corporate salaried slave, I was wondering whether, for my small business purposes (including my many email addresses), Outlook would be a better 'one stop shop' for me. Particularly, whether it would be better to have calendars, contacts & mail in one place rather than the separate apps of the Mac options mentioned above.

In my searches, I've found a few discussions threads in which people have seemed to have had problems with Outlook & have been asking for help (which concerns me).

Can someone give me their unbiased view / experiences as to Outlook for Mac 2011 vs Mail? If there has been a comprehensive discussion thread about it before, I'm happy for someone to post a link.

Thanks in advance & it's great to be here.

PS. I'm not looking for 'fan boi' type comments. I'm only looking for the best option for me & I really don't care whether its a Mac or Microsoft product.

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Totally agree, we are looking at moving away from mac mail due to that mess. Wish Apple would step up products for small businesses.

Peter Carruth - President & COO |
2009 V Street | Suite 207 | Sacramento, CA 95818
A world you can’t predict demands a telecom advisor you can trust
Strato Communications – Providing mission critical voice, IP and transport solutions to the Cloud
www.stratocommunications.com

¨¨¨°°¨¨°°¨¨Ô¨¨°°¨¨°°¨¨¨

Originally Posted by BornAgainMac

Very true. I have had some really nice emails formatted like crap on the other side.

[MarMan]

As with your post last year, this is my first post. I am new to MacBook and learning my way around. Was very dependent upon OutLook for the versatility of the contacts-fields, reminders, notes, calender and email, email sorting and quick use of multiple accounts.

What are you doing and others to simplify this part of life?

[ScottNWDW]

When I was on a Windows based computer I thought Outlook was the greatest thing since sliced bread, especially when paired with the Plan Plus soft are from Franklin Covey. Finally everything that could be done in my Franklin Planner was being done on my PC. It worked great, until Apple switched iCal to the Cal Dev. Then I had several different calendars rather than categories and the Plan Plus software didn't recognize that. So I abandoned that, but was still able to use Outlook, just now with more calendars rather than one calendar with color coded categories. Now all the categories had to be their own calendar. Plan Plus only recognized one calendar, not or 7 different ones.

In 2011, I switched to the Mac and I got Office 2011 for the Mac because finally there was Outlook on the Mac. I still love Outlook, but unfortunately it doesn't play well with the iPhone and the iPad since it does not support the format that Apple now uses. Overall I do like having all my calendars, contacts, email, tasks and notes all in one place. I do like the fact that the mail portion will work with iCloud, I just wish everything worked with it. My solution is that I maintain not only iCal/Mail/etc, but I also maintain Outlook calendars, contacts, and tasks. I like that Outlook notifies me with a pop up when a new email comes in, mail just beeps. Both Mail and Outlook provide a count of unread messages, but Outlook also shows an unopened envelope if I am in another app. In some ways it is better, some ways the iCal/Contacts/mail work better for me, in some ways Outlook is better. I wish they all could work together and if they could it would be awesome.

One of the BEST features I like about the Mac version of Outlook is a little talked about feature called My Day. It's a pop up app that shows your days appointments and tasks, without opening Outlook. One of the things I like is that it shows tasks that are in progress meaning they have not just a due date, but a start date as well, and those tasks appear inn your task list starting on the start date. Too many apps on both the Mac and PC seem to just go with the Due Date. I love having start dates on many tasks because they may take a few days to complete. An example would be something as simple as buying a greeting card. The persons birthday is a set date, but I will set up the task with the due date being the actual birthdate, but the start date might be a week earlier. A week before the birthday the task to buy or send the greeting card will appear.

Someday I hope that there is a way that Outlook will work well with the iPhone and iPad.

I haven't talked a lot about tasks, Outlook does handle them, and iCal also has a task list, but for me I do use and Love OmniFocus. Since moving to the Mac, I learned to use and love OmniFocus for my task list. I still maintain a task list in Outlook and iCal, but will probably continue to rely mainly on OmniFocus. The tasks that I maintain in Outlook and iCal are primarily the repeat tasks.

That's just my take on the whole Outlook thing. I think it is a great app, but the Mac version could be a little better and play nicer with iOS devices. The Windows version plays very well with iOS, so I can't understand why the Mac version can't.

[qveda]

I use Office 2011 on my MacPro with Mountain Lion largely so I can create Word or Ppt or Excel and send them to my windows machine for work. I only use Outlook 2011 for my POP IMAP account. all my calendar items are on my corp windows machine which syncs to my iphone (along with my pop imap account).

Recently Outlook 2011 on my Mac got corrupted and would crash after opening. after some research, I was able to repair it by rebuilding the database (identities). This inspired me to consider Mac Mail .

my concern with Mac Mail is problems with rich text not looking right when people receive it (Outlook seems to be find for this). Is this still a problem today ?
UPDATE: just tried Mail, seems to do better than earlier version with rich text, but seems like it doesn't provide a menu / ribbon for text formatting, its a pain to have to open a format window etc. but perhaps I'm just not figuring it out yet.


my concern with Outlook 2011, is that I like to use personal folders, but worry that I can't back them up or export them easily. (at least I don't know how). I heard there are 3rd party apps for this. anyone have experience with this ? recommendations ?
UPDATE: thread on 3rd party coverters http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1141210

[JSC]

As background, I use an iMac 27" with ML, older MacBook Pro, iPad (3) and iPhone 4. One of the reasons I wanted to use ML Mail is a consistent UI across all of my devices. I also use outsourced Exchange from AppRiver (which has an outstanding SPAM and other filters). In addition, I have two alias accounts on Exchange. In addition, I have a POP and iCloud accounts.

All of my devices work together and sync well. I have Mail and Outlook running simultaneously with no problems. I have found that Mail's UI consistency and features are generally easier to use, especially "Move" for filing and a better view of "conversations", but its close. Outlook is better if you tend to send or reply to messages that you wish to highlight selected text which can be done in Mail, but not as clean (you need to use Style). Characters such as smiley faces work better in Outlook if you are sending to people who use Outlook. Both sync calendar and contacts work fine with Apple and MS2011 as I'm using Exchange as the base server. I've also found Mail to be more stable.

Bottomline, just like I use Safari as my primary browser, I also find Firefox works better in certain situations. I'm doing the same thing with Mail as my primary email tool with Outlook for highlighting applications. It comes down to what you do the most with the other as an option when you need it.

[Varsuuk]

I was about to hit the sack and came across this thread - only read first page then went to read last - tomorrow will read the series.

One question, if it wasn't covered here when I look at prior pages:
Is there an option to NOT download pictures etc on Mac Mail unless marked as OK to do so for that sender/address?

In Windows Outlook this is smooth and easy - you select the mail right click then pick junk mail - mark as never junk or whatever. In MAC Outlook, I can only use the option to download from contacts only to set this up which requires me to add ridiculous "contacts" just to allow the downloads automatically. Unfortunately my contacts fill with things like NewEgg.com, etc just for this.

[infobleep]

I'm sick of Mail and having just got a new MacBook Air I tested Outlook for Mac. However as far as I can tell that doesn't offer and and or mail filters combined.

For example:
If message is to the account e-mailaddress@test.email
and
body contains "test"
or
from contains e-mailaddress@fromfriend.email
or
cc contains e-mailaddress@fromfriend.email
Then move to test folder.

As far as I am aware, rules in Outlook are global and not account specific.

The other issue I have with Outlook is that there is no non-commerical use pricing available for it. It is just aimed at businesses. I also think if a bug is found, it may take sometime for it to be fixed and if it is fixed in a later full release I might be forced to pay another £80 for a new version. I don't mind paying for a mail app but not prices aimed at business users.

I am now looking into Thunderbird, which I know wasn't part of this original discussion. That only has limited mail filtering. It is account specific, which has advantages and disadvantages. However there is an addon called FiltaQuilla. It offers regular expressions and looks like it might be useful. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thu...n/filtaquilla/

One problem is that the support site is now said by Google to contain or have contained malware. I won't provide a link because of this. I did venture onto it and when I went to post a comment using a fake e-mail address and name, I was redirected to a malware site. Now I found the sites owner on a whois site and contacted him via e-mail. I'm hoping it is just some hacker whose got to his site, rather than the site owner turning bad. The original site was hosted in a wordpress blog and seemed genuine enough.

I may still try the add on, since it's not brand new, so I'd hope that if it was doing something else bad, people might have found out about it by now.

[arb7]

Just one extra 'factor' in the mix when choosing Outlook (especially if you came from Windows).... A feature a lot of people rely in (with limited exchange mailbox sizes) is archiving. Out the box Outlook Mac doesn't support it but you can make up for that with AppleScript

You can read more or download the latest script here

http://blog.7thdomain.com/2012/09/03...look-mac-2011/

The same could be written for Mac Mail but it's just something users of Outlook tend to need if they use corporate mail.

[timmerk]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Outlook 2011 is the second full release of Entourage EWS (Entourage 13). Its version number of Outlook 14.x.x. It has added [some] Outlook-compatibility features as befits its new name.

+1

So many people think Outlook for the Mac is a brand new app, written from the ground up. It's not. It's Entourage rebranded and slightly updated.

[rebech34]

Hello there - first post in this forum.
I'm an ex Microsoft user, now have a macbook pro and love it. it's used mainly for work.

I currently have office mac 2011.

I am part of a mailing list called orders@justaname.com. I still cannot figure out how to direct all emails coming to the mailing list (and to me as part of it), directly to a folder I created called "orders".
The temporary solution I am currently using is to apply a rule on specific senders to move their emails directly to that folder but since that list contains thusands of email addresses, I can barley control it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
RB