Entourage and Exchange Server

[Lyle]

I've ordered Microsoft Office 2004 and it should be here soon. The goal is to be able to connect to my employer's Exchange 2003 server using Entourage (and thus take advantage of all of the contacts, e-mail and scheduling stuff therein).

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has been down this road already, and whether there are any gotchas that I should be on the lookout for.

 

[balamw]

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has been down this road already, and whether there are any gotchas that I should be on the lookout for.

We had a couple of Macs at work that were trying to use Entourage with our Exchange 2000 server, and I helped the IT guys set it up and get it to work. For Entourage to work, the Exchange server needs to have IMAP4 (though POP3 might also work) and OWA (Outlook Web Access) enabled. If they aren't already enabled, which isn't a given if everyone uses Outlook, Entourage will not work.

B

 

[Queso]

Make sure that the IT department have the relevant Exchange hotfixes installed, otherwise Entourage can grow the logfiles on the servers to massive levels. Apart from that it should be fine as long as you don't expect full Outlook functionality. There's a few features that Microsoft still haven't put into Entourage, and some e-mails don't render properly between versions.

 

[Lyle]

... it should be fine as long as you don't expect full Outlook functionality. There's a few features that Microsoft still haven't put into Entourage, and some e-mails don't render properly between versions.

Do you know right offhand what features aren't implemented in Entourage 2004? Or where I might look for that info?

 

[Queso]

Do you know right offhand what features aren't implemented in Entourage 2004? Or where I might look for that info?

Not off the top of my head, but there's a document here on the Microsoft site that discusses the various Exchange client programs.

 

[balamw]

Not off the top of my head, but there's a document here on the Microsoft site that discusses the various Exchange client programs.

There's no direct Outlook to Entourage comparison at the link, so be sure to check out the Outlook to Outlook Express and OWA sections since Entourage is closer in how it accesses the server to OE for e-mail and OWA for calendar/contact info.

There's a fair amount of stuff you can do in Outlook that is Windows specific, e.g. the whole "Rich Text" e-mail format where people can paste in random document elements into e-mails, e.g. Excel spreadsheets etc... rather than attach them. These don't translate well to standard e-mails that can be sent over IMAP so sometimes you miss entire things that could just as well have been sent as standard attachments.

B

 

[Lyle]

The software arrived yesterday afternoon and so I installed it at home last night. I'm at work now and it seems to be working properly (i.e. I've managed to sync-up with our Exchange server). I didn't think it was working at first because it took it awhile to start synching with the Exchange server; but now everything seems to be there.

Now I just need to figure out how to use Entourage (having used Outlook for so long).