Outlook for Mac 2011 vs Mail - Which is better?

[-peter]

Entourage/Outlook has had the same embarrassing issue for over 11 years.....an unstable database file that becomes corrupt, often when it gets to 4gb, and it usually cannot be rebuilt successfully.

It's a simple decision - there here are no features in a program that makes it worth using if that program regularly loses your data.

[jlc1978]

Originally Posted by -peter

Entourage/Outlook has had the same embarrassing issue for over 11 years.....an unstable database file that becomes corrupt, often when it gets to 4gb, and it usually cannot be rebuilt successfully.

It's a simple decision - there here are no features in a program that makes it worth using if that program regularly loses your data.

Interesting. I've never had an issue with Outlook and my email file is rather large.

[artsci]

I switched from PCs to Macs about three years ago and used first Entourage then Outlook for Mac 2011, so I have had extensive experience with both in an Exchange Server environment and with extensive IT support from my company. In my experience Outlook has been a nightmare, and the problems I've had are too long to list here. They include ridiculously slow performance, frequent crashes, and corrupted data base files that need to be rebuilt frequently. I'm a heavy user with extensive email and calendar files. Outlook just can't handle it all. As we operate with Exchange Server, all of my Outlook files were backed up on the server. This is a good thing as owing to several serious Outlook crashes I would have lost nearly all of my files.

Two days ago I switched over to Apples's Mail, iCal, and address book, all working off Exchange Server 2010. Suffice it to say Apple's software works with Exchange Server far better than Microsoft's (go figure). I keep both Mail and iCal open on my desktop all day. They load and operate much faster, are easier to use and synch, and work seamlessly with all of the applications that I normally use with my calendar and email.

This morning I totally removed Outlook and all of its related files. Haven't missed it a bit.

I feel like a complete idiot for having suffered through all the problems with Entourage and Outlook for so long. If I had started using the Apple software from the start I would have saved myself endless days of wasted time, and worse yet, untold hours of anxiety and rage at the problems Microsoft has created with these insufficiently and poorly developed products.

My advice: don't hesitate for a minute to make the switch. Drop Outloook now and set up Mail, iCal, and Address Book. BTW, everyone else in my company uses PCs and they have issues with Outlook as well, although not nearly as serious as mine were.

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.

[altvin]

Has anyone encountered a problem whereby they can receive emails on Macmail, but Macmail won't send out emails? This does not always happen (never happens at my home or office), but often does if I am traveling and using a hotel wi-fi or even hotel cable hook up. Settings are all correct. For some reason it just won't send emails out, although there is no problem getting emails in. Thoughts?

[danny_w]

Originally Posted by artsci

I switched from PCs to Macs about three years ago and used first Entourage then Outlook for Mac 2011, so I have had extensive experience with both in an Exchange Server environment and with extensive IT support from my company. In my experience Outlook has been a nightmare, and the problems I've had are too long to list here. They include ridiculously slow performance, frequent crashes, and corrupted data base files that need to be rebuilt frequently. I'm a heavy user with extensive email and calendar files. Outlook just can't handle it all. As we operate with Exchange Server, all of my Outlook files were backed up on the server. This is a good thing as owing to several serious Outlook crashes I would have lost nearly all of my files.

Two days ago I switched over to Apples's Mail, iCal, and address book, all working off Exchange Server 2010. Suffice it to say Apple's software works with Exchange Server far better than Microsoft's (go figure). I keep both Mail and iCal open on my desktop all day. They load and operate much faster, are easier to use and synch, and work seamlessly with all of the applications that I normally use with my calendar and email.

This morning I totally removed Outlook and all of its related files. Haven't missed it a bit.

I feel like a complete idiot for having suffered through all the problems with Entourage and Outlook for so long. If I had started using the Apple software from the start I would have saved myself endless days of wasted time, and worse yet, untold hours of anxiety and rage at the problems Microsoft has created with these insufficiently and poorly developed products.

My advice: don't hesitate for a minute to make the switch. Drop Outloook now and set up Mail, iCal, and Address Book. BTW, everyone else in my company uses PCs and they have issues with Outlook as well, although not nearly as serious as mine were.

Good luck with the changeover to Mac Mail. I just tried again after your post to change over and Mac Mail simply dies on the vine for me. Yes Outlook for Mac has its problems but (other than stalling sometimes) it just works the way that Mail never has for me.

[nefan65]

Originally Posted by artsci

I switched from PCs to Macs about three years ago and used first Entourage then Outlook for Mac 2011, so I have had extensive experience with both in an Exchange Server environment and with extensive IT support from my company. In my experience Outlook has been a nightmare, and the problems I've had are too long to list here. They include ridiculously slow performance, frequent crashes, and corrupted data base files that need to be rebuilt frequently. I'm a heavy user with extensive email and calendar files. Outlook just can't handle it all. As we operate with Exchange Server, all of my Outlook files were backed up on the server. This is a good thing as owing to several serious Outlook crashes I would have lost nearly all of my files.

Two days ago I switched over to Apples's Mail, iCal, and address book, all working off Exchange Server 2010. Suffice it to say Apple's software works with Exchange Server far better than Microsoft's (go figure). I keep both Mail and iCal open on my desktop all day. They load and operate much faster, are easier to use and synch, and work seamlessly with all of the applications that I normally use with my calendar and email.

This morning I totally removed Outlook and all of its related files. Haven't missed it a bit.

I feel like a complete idiot for having suffered through all the problems with Entourage and Outlook for so long. If I had started using the Apple software from the start I would have saved myself endless days of wasted time, and worse yet, untold hours of anxiety and rage at the problems Microsoft has created with these insufficiently and poorly developed products.

My advice: don't hesitate for a minute to make the switch. Drop Outloook now and set up Mail, iCal, and Address Book. BTW, everyone else in my company uses PCs and they have issues with Outlook as well, although not nearly as serious as mine were.

I've been using Mail/iCal with Exchange 2010 for almost a year now. It's been great! I tried using Outlook 2011, but it's a mess. I like the clean look of Mail/iCal. Have yet to have any crashes, etc. Works better than Outlook w/Exchange; both are MS Products...go figure?

[squeakr]

Originally Posted by altvin

Has anyone encountered a problem whereby they can receive emails on Macmail, but Macmail won't send out emails? This does not always happen (never happens at my home or office), but often does if I am traveling and using a hotel wi-fi or even hotel cable hook up. Settings are all correct. For some reason it just won't send emails out, although there is no problem getting emails in. Thoughts?

Sounds like the places you are visiting are not allowing the port through their firewalls. Depending on the port used, some do this for security, and some to make sure that spamming can't occur from their systems. Sounds like the port is being blocked if it is happening only at those certain "public" places. Without knowing your mail server's configuration it is truly hard to say.

[asf1966]

Originally Posted by altvin

Has anyone encountered a problem whereby they can receive emails on Macmail, but Macmail won't send out emails? This does not always happen (never happens at my home or office), but often does if I am traveling and using a hotel wi-fi or even hotel cable hook up. Settings are all correct. For some reason it just won't send emails out, although there is no problem getting emails in. Thoughts?

This was a constant problem for me. I bet your outgoing mail server thinks you're a spammer and blocks your outgoing mail.

Do you use POP3? I switched to a hosted exchange provider and it's never been a problem since.

[philxor]

I used the Mail, iCal, etc. setup with our Exchange server for a couple years and scrapped Entourage because it was terrible but I have had very good luck with Outlook 2011 since its release. I've never had a problem with corrupted databases or lost mail, etc. and my current identity is over 8GB and I've migrated across multiple laptops. Lion Mail couldn't migrate my mail over from the previous version I had to pretty much start over.

I like having everything integrated into Outlook and now that we are using Lync all of our conferencing is completely integrated into Outlook as opposed to having to go through another client. I also like having all of the functions of Mail, Calendar, and Contacts built into one program as opposed to using three.

[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

[mara88]

I was a relatively happy Outlook user (Office for Mac 2011) up until last week. As a former PC user I felt more comfortable with it than Mac Mail for my first time ever on a MAC. (BTW very happy with my Mac so far)

However, about a week ago after the last Lion update
I lost very important emails (folders included) in Outlook and have been unable to retrieve them. Called Microsoft and was told it's an issue with Apple.

Called Apple and got some help there. After much time on the phone I found the emails and lost folders. I had backed these up on Time machine regularly.

However when trying to import them the file extension olk_14 was greyed out and I couldn't import them. Error message read " Outlook cannot open the file because it's not associated with a default identity."

So Apple suggested go back to Microsoft as they had done all they could.

Called Microsoft. Did they help? NOPE. Said the file was corrupted and it was an issue with Apple and they are not trained to help with Time Machine.

My advice: unless you absolutely need Outlook STAY AWAY while on a Mac. They are not really compatible.

I'm using Mail and won't go back to Outlook anytime soon even though I prefer the look and feel of Outlook

[MacRumorUser]

Originally Posted by mara88

I was a relatively happy Outlook user (Office for Mac 2011) up until last week. As a former PC user I felt more comfortable with it than Mac Mail for my first time ever on a MAC. (BTW very happy with my Mac so far)

However, about a week ago after the last Lion update
I lost very important emails (folders included) in Outlook and have been unable to retrieve them. Called Microsoft and was told it's an issue with Apple.

Called Apple and got some help there. After much time on the phone I found the emails and lost folders. I had backed these up on Time machine regularly.

However when trying to import them the file extension olk_14 was greyed out and I couldn't import them. Error message read " Outlook cannot open the file because it's not associated with a default identity."

So Apple suggested go back to Microsoft as they had done all they could.

Called Microsoft. Did they help? NOPE. Said the file was corrupted and it was an issue with Apple and they are not trained to help with Time Machine.

My advice: unless you absolutely need Outlook STAY AWAY while on a Mac. They are not really compatible.

I'm using Mail and won't go back to Outlook anytime soon even though I prefer the look and feel of Outlook

Hi Mara, sadly there are bad tech support advisors in every company, often the 'Office' support guys are not familiar with Mac version at all and the information can be misleading.

If you have problems with Office on mac there are a couple of better avenues to try such as www.facebook.com/officeformac or http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/m.../macoffice2011

I imagine your issue was actually a corrupt identity issue, and a rebuild of the identity would have sorted it.

[dianeoforegon]

Originally Posted by infobleep

I'm not sure if Outlook 2011 stores all mail in one file. I know it uses a database as well as the .OLM format but I couldn't find out much more than this during my searches on-line. Personally I like single message files or individual files for folders.

The .olm format is equal to the Entourage .rge file. It's for exporting messages only. You can only view by importing back into Outlook or Entourage. Outlook will import .rge but does not export as .rge.

Everything you wanted to know about the new Outlook database.....

Outlook, Outlook, how does your Database grow?


Database Basics:
http://www.officeformachelp.com/outlook/database/

[dianeoforegon]

Originally Posted by mara88

However when trying to import them the file extension olk_14 was greyed out and I couldn't import them. Error message read " Outlook cannot open the file because it's not associated with a default identity."

You CANNOT import an .olk_14 file. If you can't open the Identity that contains the file, try one of these options.(work off a backup of your Identity for both options)

1) Delete the database file for that Identity and let Outlook create a new one.
2) Do the "Hail Mary" step described here.

More Info
Outlook cannot open the file because it is not associated with the default identity

Rebuild Basics:

• Do Not Rebuild Identities with Exchange and IMAP accounts. Delete the accounts (this deletes the cache files in Outlook). Do the rebuild then add back accounts.
• Make sure you have plenty of free space on your drive. Make sure that you have at least three times as much hard disk space available as the current size of your Outlook identity PLUS 10% free for virtual memory.

[lnferno]

I was actually surprised by all of the people posting on here that are on an Exchange server, but prefer the Mail and Calendar client to Outlook. As a new Mac user, who is on Exchange 2010, I tried both Mail/Calendar and Outlook 2011 and within minutes, found Outlook to be better in terms of functionality. I'm really surprised to hear that the people on Exchange must not really schedule meetings with other internal folks to see free/busy data. I did not see any obvious way of doing this with Calendar. That is a show stopper for me. I have to have that functionality.

I like the look of Mail and Calendar over Outlook, but Outlook seems to have better integration with Exchange, so for me, I'm sticking with Outlook, unless there's a better way of checking other Exchange users' free/busy time with Calendar?

[VirtualRain]

Originally Posted by lnferno

I was actually surprised by all of the people posting on here that are on an Exchange server, but prefer the Mail and Calendar client to Outlook. As a new Mac user, who is on Exchange 2010, I tried both Mail/Calendar and Outlook 2011 and within minutes, found Outlook to be better in terms of functionality. I'm really surprised to hear that the people on Exchange must not really schedule meetings with other internal folks to see free/busy data. I did not see any obvious way of doing this with Calendar. That is a show stopper for me. I have to have that functionality.

I like the look of Mail and Calendar over Outlook, but Outlook seems to have better integration with Exchange, so for me, I'm sticking with Outlook, unless there's a better way of checking other Exchange users' free/busy time with Calendar?

This appears to have been in iCal for a couple of versions now...

Just click "Available Meeting Times" after adding your attendees.





I've only just switched to a Mac at work (Exchange 2007 shop) a few days ago and here's what I have noticed..

Issues I can see so far with iCal are...
1. There is duplication of meeting requests in Mail and iCal (Accepting or rejecting in one or the other does nothing to the request in the other app)
2. There's no facility in iCal or Mail to suggest an alternate meeting time from an invite. Best you can do is reply to the email invite and suggest a new time via the body of your email.
3. Meeting invites in iCal are not HTML enabled so if someone has embedded links or images in their invite from Windows Outlook, your invitation will be a mess and hard to parse.

My issues with Mail so far...
1. It only supports rich text composition, not the HTML composition that Outlook for Windows has. So attachments are embedded inline and not treated the same was as they are in Windows Outlook (where they appear in the summary information at the top of the message)
2. Mail does not get push email as fast as Outlook. My iPhone will sometimes get new mail faster than Mail.app will. I can imagine this will be painful when I'm on the phone with someone who says "I just emailed you a copy" and I'm waiting and waiting for it to appear in Mail.

I'm going to give Mail/iCal a bit of time, but I suspect it's not worth frustrating myself and will ultimately switch to Outlook. We'll see.

[lnferno]

How do you view tasks in Mail?

Also for iCal, it doesn't appear that you can color code meetings and appointments like in Outlook?

[msnyc]

After 10 years on PCs driving me insane I bought a MacBook Pro and couldn't be happier. Naturally the only fly in the ointment is MicroHard. Outlook SUCKS.

#1 Can't import the rules I exported from Windows (or if you can no place to be found) so I had to recreate them all
#2 No 'Create Rule from Email' which let you create a rule in 2-3 clicks. Sure they have what appears to be the same thing but.. it is not
#3 Crashes
#4 Running the Rules. At first I thought this isn't working. Then I noticed what it was doing was running it once on each rule I selected.

So since I had to make rules from scratch, my inbox started to load up with emails that were previously going into the correct folder. I took the time to recreate all the rules but now to get the emails where they belonged, Run All did nothing. I had to run each rule multiple times to get each email processed. Naturally I decided against that since that simple turns a Rule into a Suggestion, and had to sort by Sender, and manually drag. Begging the question; why rules in the first place.

Trashing the Outlook, and migrating over to Apple Mail. Planning to do the same with Word and Excel. I plan to never touch anything made by Microsoft again, they are the most arrogant incompetent company in history.

[danny_w]

Originally Posted by msnyc

After 10 years on PCs driving me insane I bought a MacBook Pro and couldn't be happier. Naturally the only fly in the ointment is MicroHard. Outlook SUCKS.

#1 Can't import the rules I exported from Windows (or if you can no place to be found) so I had to recreate them all
#2 No 'Create Rule from Email' which let you create a rule in 2-3 clicks. Sure they have what appears to be the same thing but.. it is not
#3 Crashes
#4 Running the Rules. At first I thought this isn't working. Then I noticed what it was doing was running it once on each rule I selected.

So since I had to make rules from scratch, my inbox started to load up with emails that were previously going into the correct folder. I took the time to recreate all the rules but now to get the emails where they belonged, Run All did nothing. I had to run each rule multiple times to get each email processed. Naturally I decided against that since that simple turns a Rule into a Suggestion, and had to sort by Sender, and manually drag. Begging the question; why rules in the first place.

Trashing the Outlook, and migrating over to Apple Mail. Planning to do the same with Word and Excel. I plan to never touch anything made by Microsoft again, they are the most arrogant incompetent company in history.

Sorry, I don't understand the problem with rules. Any rules that I created in Outlook for Windows ran on the server, not on the client, so the rules are still there whether I use Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, Mac Mail, or iOS Mail. I created them so many years ago that I don't even remember what I did to create them.

[gregorypierce]

When Office 2011 was release for the Mac I made the migration to Outlook because I needed to integrate with my employers Exchange server - but then I found that it didn't support Exchange 2003 (some companies just won't upgrade).

After some time of using Outlook, I found that it just becomes a very very slow mess taking a long time to load, eating lots of CPU performance, and generally just becoming annoying. When I made my migration to 10.8 and started seeing things like notifications and such I began to realize that there would be better OS level integration with iOS and the underlying operating system if I went with Mail.app so I decided to as an experiment switch back and see how well Mail would handle the same load. Mail has performed sooooooo much better than Outlook that I can't for a minute imagine going back to Outlook. Outlook didn't really integrate with the rest of the ecosystem so I was never able to bridge my home and work life and since I couldn't connect to my offices Exchange server - I was bringing along a lot of "stuff" that was just robbing the machine of performance.

On Windows Outlook is a great product. The same cannot be safe of its current OSX iteration. I'm sure Microsoft will make it better, as the rest of the Office stuff is pretty cool (though for some reason they refuse to bring the statistics package over for Excel... maybe next year), but for now... its just not worth the punishing performance hit.

[fhall1]

I too had been using Microsoft Mail since Entourage days.....two weeks ago I upgraded to Lion and switched to Apple Mail...lots of niggling little issues are now gone and I can just use my email instead of fighting with it.

[danny_w]

They both have their problems. I have switched over to Mail but sometimes it won't automatically mark messages as read and I have to manually mark them., and some other minor annoyances. Also its performance is abysmal if you have too many messages (I had to delete several thousand old ones that I always kept around with Outlook). I still like Outlook's calendar far better (perhaps because I am more used to it).

Now if Mail would only sync with Gmail as Exchange the way it can on iPhone and iPad it would be my only mail app.

[jsgreen]

Originally Posted by jahala

... I find that anything iCal cannot handle for calendaring.....

Except iCal can't send an email to all attendees of a Calendar event, which is really inconvenient. Come on Apple, please improve iCal for business use.

[darylj]

Our company just updated Exchange server (2010) using a third part company.

What I've read, MS Exchange 2007 is native since Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6). I was just testing today on my Macbook Pro (10.6.8) and Apple Mail and iCal seem to work great and was very easy to set up. Activity Monitor shows far less CPU usage in Apple apps vs. Outlook 2011.

Mail works as expected and also supports address search. Calendar syncs fine and was able to create an event and invite others.

Also tested on iPad 5.1 (gen3) and works great as well.

[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...........