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Entourage Sucks

J

j0ebeer

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 5, 2007
42
0
Frustrated by Entourage hence the nasty headline. But here's the problem. My company is implementing Exchange and I'm trying to stay strong using my Mac. However, I am having extreme difficulties with Entourage. Our company is not using it via SSL and the default Mail app with Leopard works fine. But for whatever reason using the same settings and credentials Entourage still just fails. Has anyone else gotten it to work without using SSL? The connection looks right in Entourage but I cannot see the folder lists where I can in Mac Mail.

Thanks in advance. Jg
 
I can't help with your problem, but I have to agree with the title of the thread. Entourage is a slow, ugly application.
 
j0ebeer said:
... The connection looks right in Entourage but I cannot see the folder lists where I can in Mac Mail.

...
Click to expand...
Yes, Entourage sucks. Another thing that you need to understand is that every installation of Exchange is different. Outlook can autodiscover the settings of your exchange account. Entourage cannot. If you really want to use Microsoft's POS, then find a Windows PC on which your account is properly setup in Outlook. Go through its settings, write them down, and copy them over to your installation of Entourage.

If Entourage still does not work, then don't worry about it. Get on your knees and praise heaven that your Exchange server works just fine in Mail.
 
MisterMe said:
...Outlook can autodiscover the settings of your exchange account. Entourage cannot...
Click to expand...
I don't know why you say that. I got a Mac at work early this year, installed Entourage (2004 version) and it promptly found my Exchange server and configured itself automatically, using Activsync. Everything has worked like glass since then. However, I have never had mail.app work well with Exchange, even over OWA; it gets bogged down and halts before it loads all of my folders and messages.
 
MisterMe said:
Outlook can autodiscover the settings of your exchange account. Entourage cannot.
Click to expand...

We added support for auto-discovery of Exchange 2007 settings for Entourage 2008 in SP1. You can download SP1 by going to any Office app, clicking on the "Help" menu, then selecting "Check for Updates", or you can manually download it from our download page.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
Advantages to Entourage

I have used Entourage 2004 since it came out. I like it and it has some features I rely on. I don't think these features exist in Mail.app or Thunderbird. Please someone correct me if I am wrong.

(1) I can select a group of emails and go to the menubar and select "save all attachments" and it will save all the attachments into a folder for me. I receive a lot of attachments and having to save them from one email at a time is maddening.

(2) As above but can also "delete all attachments".

(3) As above but can also print a batch of selected emails with a single "print" command or save as a multi-page pdf

(4) my Entourage has several independent "identities" which I use for different email accounts and I can easily switch between them

(5) I can easily back up or transfer my Entourage accounts to another computer by copying/saving the "microsoft user data" files. In fact I can even keep my user data on a firewire drive and plug it in to any computer and run Entourage with an alias to the user data file. Slick.

Last I checked these functions were all either unavailable, or more difficult, in Mail.app or Thunderbird. Why I don't know because they are indispensable to me.

--Brew (Pismo G4 500 [upgrade], PBG4 15" 1.5, PBG4 12" 1.5)
 
why all the entourage hate? After having used outlook for many years at work entourage rawked! all my coworkers are jealous of it...they all have windows machines. It's really functional and I've become more productive since i switched about a month ago.
 
wintermute509 said:
why all the entourage hate? After having used outlook for many years at work entourage rawked! all my coworkers are jealous of it...they all have windows machines. It's really functional and I've become more productive since i switched about a month ago.
Click to expand...

OK, so whatever drugs your taking, I want some!

PS: i can copy a slide from PPT and paste it into an email via Mail but i can't do it via Entourage 2008. how badly does that suck?
 
I have a love / hate for Entourage.

When it is working, it is great.

When it looses my contacts and have to take a few hours to rebuild, since it does not seem to have the file-as field that is used in Exchange, all contacts appear as no name. So every contact has to have the file-as field reset.

When I see my calendar disappear, one item at a time, for no known reason and have to dig a backup out of time machine, that may or may not be current.

Or when it can't display the email I sent from my iPhone and I have to open Outlook or Webmail to view it.

Or when IT sends me a note and says there are 433 items in my System Cleanup folder, but I can't see it.

Or I can't read any of the archives that I have from Outlook.

Or I want to suggest a new time for a meeting, but have to decline and sent it as a comment.

Or I want to add an attendee to a meeting that someone else scheduled.

Otherwise I love Entourage.

I still don't understand why they needed to scrap Outlook and try something new.

Stuart

PS. Support sucks for this tool as well!
 
i sooooooo put on my angry entourage is the best thing in the world face... but i realized you were talking about the program not the show...haha... carry on...
 
My boss is having a problem with Entourage. She uses it on her Macbook Pro, and while it runs smoothly when she works from home, it crashes on her anywhere from 3-10 times a day when using the network at work. Is there a particular setting I can look for to avoid this? Anyone know what might be the cause?

Thanks.
 
JTStarkiller said:
My boss is having a problem with Entourage. She uses it on her Macbook Pro, and while it runs smoothly when she works from home, it crashes on her anywhere from 3-10 times a day when using the network at work. Is there a particular setting I can look for to avoid this? Anyone know what might be the cause?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Entourage has several modes of operation. Is it imap/pop or exchange? If exchange, is it webmail interface or direct to server? I have seen some issues (delays, hangs, timeouts) on our internal network when hooked to webmail, since it has to go outside the network to access that server.

There was a script floating around that would switch from webmail to server depending on the network you were connected to, but it was kind of a pain.

Stuart
 
Personally, I just gave up on Entourage (as of yesterday). I liked the interface of the latest version (Office:Mac 2008) because it is so much like Outlook which I've used just about every day of my life since it came out.

But I switched back to Apple's Mail program because Entourage is slow to load, slow to search and doesn't give me what I'm looking for after it searches! :mad:

Mail is fast and searches are almost immediate and always accurate. :apple:
 
majordude said:
Personally, I just gave up on Entourage (as of yesterday). I liked the interface of the latest version (Office:Mac 2008) because it is so much like Outlook which I've used just about every day of my life since it came out.

But I switched back to Apple's Mail program because Entourage is slow to load, slow to search and doesn't give me what I'm looking for after it searches! :mad:

Mail is fast and searches are almost immediate and always accurate. :apple:
Click to expand...
You must have small mailboxes or very few messages if mail.app is working so well for you. Whenever I have tried it mail.app completely choked. Besides which mail.app doesn't even support ActiveSync, so its communication with the server is horrendously slow.
 
sschwar4 said:
Entourage has several modes of operation. Is it imap/pop or exchange? If exchange, is it webmail interface or direct to server? I have seen some issues (delays, hangs, timeouts) on our internal network when hooked to webmail, since it has to go outside the network to access that server.

There was a script floating around that would switch from webmail to server depending on the network you were connected to, but it was kind of a pain.

Stuart
Click to expand...

It is an exchange account, and I believe direct to server.
 
danny_w said:
You must have small mailboxes or very few messages if mail.app is working so well for you. Whenever I have tried it mail.app completely choked.
Click to expand...

Nope. As a matter of fact I have email going back to 2004!

2004 (2,397 emails), 2005 (5,682), 2006 (5,242), 2007 (2,871), 2008 (2,457) = 18,649 emails :eek: plus whatever came in today.
 

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JTStarkiller said:
It is an exchange account, and I believe direct to server.
Click to expand...

I did some checking with friends, no one has reported crashes. However, I have noticed that Office for Mac is not up to the same standards as MS Office for Windows. I believe Office for Mac is not as stable. Lack of experience on the developers part.

It took the Office for Windows guys nearly 15 years to get Outlook where it is today. I think we need to wait another 10 for Entourage to become stable.
 
sschwar4 said:
It took the Office for Windows guys nearly 15 years to get Outlook where it is today. I think we need to wait another 10 for Entourage to become stable.
Click to expand...

Become stable? I didn't have Entourage crash once in over 18 months of using 2004 and 2008. To me, the issue isn't stability... the issue is speed and long loading times.
 
I work with my Macbook Pro on a Microsoft Exchange network at the office and I have to say the Entourage appears stable in my experience.

The real problem for me (that keeps me using Outlook in VMWare Fusion) is that it simply lacks the features that Outlook has.

For me at least,

- You can't assign tasks from Entourage
- There is no way to set read and receive receipts for sent emails in Entourage
- The HTML email doesn't work quite the same way as Outlook in that I can't just copy and paste a spreadsheet from Excel 2008 into a new email and have it display like it does in Excel

These are functions I use pretty regularly so the fact they are absent tends to keep me using Outlook, but I can't actually say I've had any stability problems so far.
 
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