Outlook 2011 MAC issues (signature, group lists, calendars)

[johnclin]

Hi,

I’ve been testing Outlook 2011 for some customers to try to move them away from having to use Outlook via a VM, since it can be tedious to use.

However, I’m experiencing some issues I will list below, and see if these might be anomalies or bugs.

- signature: customer cannot set a default signature of any kind. But the 3 delegates she can send emails on behalf of, she can change those default signatures.

- group lists: there are subscribed public folders that work fine via Outlook on PC. On the MAC side, only the lists that have contacts are visible, but one list that contains within it another 5 lists of contacts, do not show up - they remain blank.

- calendars: I added 3 calendars that a person has delegate permissions to edit or review. However, I cannot remove them now. Though I select remove from list, seconds later they reappear. Not sure where the setting is to fully remove them.

- calendars: a few items that the customer was seeing in iCal for delegates never synched into Outlook calendars.

- calendars: customer could not create a meeting for a delegate. Then I checked the account settings and added “People I am a delegate for.” That created a second identical calendar with a .1 extension. But then could not delete the calendar that was first opened (since having 2 would be confusing).

- calendars: can I select a different color for each delegate’s calendar? Right now it’s just shades of blue/gray, unless you highlight an individual.

And perhaps more issues will surface as more users jump on board, but haven’t found much tech support online for these issues.

Thanks.

 

[gabicava83]

Interesting.

Sounds like no one should go on outlook 2011.

What a pain, most of those issues are of basic functionality.

I am about to test it myself.

Shame really, as I have many users on entourage and I am not a big fan of that application either.

G.

Hi,

I’ve been testing Outlook 2011 for some customers to try to move them away from having to use Outlook via a VM, since it can be tedious to use.

However, I’m experiencing some issues I will list below, and see if these might be anomalies or bugs.

- signature: customer cannot set a default signature of any kind. But the 3 delegates she can send emails on behalf of, she can change those default signatures.

- group lists: there are subscribed public folders that work fine via Outlook on PC. On the MAC side, only the lists that have contacts are visible, but one list that contains within it another 5 lists of contacts, do not show up - they remain blank.

- calendars: I added 3 calendars that a person has delegate permissions to edit or review. However, I cannot remove them now. Though I select remove from list, seconds later they reappear. Not sure where the setting is to fully remove them.

- calendars: a few items that the customer was seeing in iCal for delegates never synched into Outlook calendars.

- calendars: customer could not create a meeting for a delegate. Then I checked the account settings and added “People I am a delegate for.” That created a second identical calendar with a .1 extension. But then could not delete the calendar that was first opened (since having 2 would be confusing).

- calendars: can I select a different color for each delegate’s calendar? Right now it’s just shades of blue/gray, unless you highlight an individual.

And perhaps more issues will surface as more users jump on board, but haven’t found much tech support online for these issues.

Thanks.

 

[JimKirk]

It does suck

I am using the MSDN version so it is final I guess.

It does suck though.

1) Gmail IMAP is not working. I have to check same messages on multiple computers.
2) Calendar does not sync with outlook.
3) On power outage lost all my mail. Outlook started with no accounts.
4) Constant errors syncing Google (every time the computer sleeps and wakes).
5) DOES NOT sync with ICAL
6) Does not work with Exchange 2003.

and on and on.

It seems like the Mac outlook team does not get it like the PC team.

 

[nadyne]

Without a lot more details about your environment, it's impossible to answer these questions. Your best course of action is likely to talk with your Microsoft account rep, who can get full details and walk you through getting everything properly set up.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[priest19]

I have had Office 2011, the final release version for a little over a week. I like all of the programs but have one problem that I have not been able to solve yet with Outlook. The place that I work is on Exchange 2007 but I keep getting an error in my e-mail. The error code is 19 and the only way to fix it is to right click the folder and select the Folder Properties and Empty Cache. This is getting really annoying to me. The Mail program works just fine though, am I missing something in Outlook. Thanks!

 

[fhall1]

Hi nadyne

Can you answer my question (posted in a couple different threads) about the possibility of setting workday start/end in Outlook calendar to the half hour?

 

[ptr]

About setting working time to half hours: it's NOT possible.

I'm one of the 'lucky' ones running Outlook for Mac since today. I have to manage 9 exchange calendars on a daily basis. The only way to see multiple calendars in Outlook for Mac is in one view. All the calendars have the same grey color, you cannot separate the calendars in side by side views or columns. This is totally un-workable. 🙁

 

[jbman73175]

About setting working time to half hours: it's NOT possible.

I'm one of the 'lucky' ones running Outlook for Mac since today. I have to manage 9 exchange calendars on a daily basis. The only way to see multiple calendars in Outlook for Mac is in one view. All the calendars have the same grey color, you cannot separate the calendars in side by side views or columns. This is totally un-workable. 🙁

True. Despite what they say on their website, you cannot view calendars side by side.

 

[sparkomatic]

Without a lot more details about your environment, it's impossible to answer these questions. Your best course of action is likely to talk with your Microsoft account rep, who can get full details and walk you through getting everything properly set up.

Regards,
Nadyne.

Oh Nadyne. I think all of us here really want Outlook for Mac to be great but I hope you do browse through some of the threads here on Office 2011 to see what we're all running up against. Not saying that everything we've been talking about will be addressed but I think there are some good topics on things that are missing and we'd like to see in the future.

 

[fosters2]

The lack of support for any group calendars (or syncing with an iPhone) other than Exchange was a non-starter for us. Without calendaring, it's just another email client.

Other than the one box that was opened, the rest of the software went back for a refund. We will not be using Outlook until group calendaring other than Exchange is supported.

Nadyne, Outlook was much anticipated, but after 2 hours it was apparent (at least to me) that waaay too many compromises were made to just get the product to ship (some things never change). Given the extra time Microsoft took to release this product, I expected more. Shame.

On the positive side, at least Entourage is on its way out.

 

[rich1383]

Solution to signature problem - worked for me

You can set a default signature for each of your mail accounts.
1. On the Outlook menu, click Preferences.
2. Under E-mail, click Signatures .
3. Click Default Signatures.
4. Under Account, select the account for which you want to set a default signature.
5. Under Default signature, click the pop-up menu in the selected row, and then click a signature name.

Note If you have multiple accounts, you must set the default signature separately for each account.

 

[nefan65]

Maybe it's me, but I'm not impressed at all with Outlook 2011. I get that Exchange 2003 isn't supported [it should be, but I get why it isn't], but IMAP is unstable and flaky. For the amount of time they worked on it, I still think the buttons, etc. are clunky looking. I mean really, can't they get someone at MS to see how other Mac based programs are written and used? It feels unfinished to me...

As for the other pieces [Word, Excel, etc.], they're okay. Still kind of slow and buggy, and that's on an MBP w/4GB of RAM.

Glad I didn't have to pay for this version [Free Upgrade from Work]. There's NO WAY I'd shell out the $$$ they want for it...

 

[dpetree]

You can set a default signature for each of your mail accounts.
1. On the Outlook menu, click Preferences.
2. Under E-mail, click Signatures .
3. Click Default Signatures.
4. Under Account, select the account for which you want to set a default signature.
5. Under Default signature, click the pop-up menu in the selected row, and then click a signature name.

Note If you have multiple accounts, you must set the default signature separately for each account.

Exactly. I have had to help so many people with this because they dont understand how to set the default sig.


Outlook 2011 is great IMO, it works with Exchange 2010/2007 better then the other options.

 

[deltalooper]

Calendars

Hey I'm having a similar issue with the calendars. I am on exchange server 2010 running Mac outlook 2011.

Somehow I have created a Shared Calendar of my calendars on the calendar pane and I cant seem to get rid of it. Basically I have two versions of the same calendars. One is the actual calendar and another is shared. How do I get rid of the shared version? When I try to delete it the option is ghosted.

It's very annoying. Any help would be appreciated.


Jonathan

 

[jtmcdermott]

Testing Outlook 2011

I don't know, maybe it's me but Mail.app, iCal and Address book work perfectly fine. Never had syncing issues, and with MobileMe & my iPhone and iPad, it work flawlessly. This is just a lot of glutenous waste. I'm testing it in my office as we're looking at moving to hosted exchange servers. I've already run into an issue with calendars. After I imported my iCal .ics files, it seems to be searching though my email for dates and adding them to my Outlook calendar. This is unwelcome as it's giving me duplicates and deleting seems to be limited by months rather than the Entourage list all feature.🙁 Not looking forward to moving the 5 test members over to this. I moved them to Mail.app to resolved their Entourage calendar sync issues, now I have to move them back to this?!? Blah!

 

[britboy2010]

Here's the deal (for me and others I have found on different forums)

Yes - its easy enough to set multiple signatures and apply them to different accounts.

However, when you choose a new email and then change which account you are sending from - nada - you are stuck with the default signature.

Evening after switching off the default signature - It STILL displays on new messages.

How much do they pay the developers at MS??

 

[Tembrock]

Outlook in Mac Office 2011 Not Ready for Primetime

First let me describe what I do with Outlook typically (via Parallels in PC environment): I am an assistant to multiple executives and a major Calendar power user for 10 years now. I'm also a "go to" user for Outlook questions, etc in our department so I'm very familiar with the PC version and many of it's features. We use Exchange 2007 at work.

What is not working for me so far and what makes this COMPLETELY UNUSABLE for day to day Business Use:

1. Side by side calendar viewing for Calendars I'm delegated to (my bosses calendars)

2. Ability to schedule a meeting that won't automatically show up on ALL of my delegated calendars. I was trying to schedule a simple reminder on my personal calendar and no matter what I did it kept appearing on ALL of my delegate calendars. Needless to say, if I can't figure that out easily, this is going to be completely unusable.

I'm sure there will be more as I've decided to go "Paralells" free for the day to test it. I was very excited but will be sad to report that there are about 90,000 co-workers at my company that will not be purchasing this software until these things are addressed. Hope someone is listening!

 

[tigres]

Without a lot more details about your environment, it's impossible to answer these questions. Your best course of action is likely to talk with your Microsoft account rep, who can get full details and walk you through getting everything properly set up.

Regards,
Nadyne.

It's really not that hard to set up though Nadyne. Pretty straight forward, other than the connection/exchange server setup.

Have you seen the settings panel?<- (of course you have) Pretty slimmed down, limited IMO- maybe that was what MSFT Mac team was attempting to achieve. Not too much tweaking to be done with what some posters are attempting.

What really blows my mind in settings is that Categories for Calendars/contacts have 12 sub Categories for every Category?!
So I have Insurance agent as a category, every other master list has this in it's list as well. If I de-select it, it overrides the master selection.

Confusing, I know, but that is how confusing it actually is.

 

[ModernMan]

Outlook 2011 Quality (lack thereof actually)

What was said (IIRC):

1. "We completely rewrote the application to match that of our Window's counterpart."
2. "We waited 6-8 months after the release of the newest Window's version to be sure we didn't miss any important new features."

What was actually done:
Looks like a mashup of old Entourage code with a revised UI layer (Cocoa-based?). Feels like a thinly-veiled Entourage with new cosmetics and a pile of new defects.

Whoever "completely rewrote" it, missed a bunch of key things (like anything substantial not already in Entourage, e.g. auto-archive). As for waiting 6-8 months to make sure they didn't miss any new features, that just defies any civil form of comment: they didn't even put in the old features, much less worry about new ones.

Con job? Maybe. An outrage? Certainly.

One can only hope that debacles such as this reach the attention of Mr. Balmer.

 

[fhall1]

It's really not that hard to set up though Nadyne. Pretty straight forward, other than the connection/exchange server setup.

Have you seen the settings panel?<- (of course you have) Pretty slimmed down, limited IMO- maybe that was what MSFT Mac team was attempting to achieve. Not too much tweaking to be done with what some posters are attempting.

What really blows my mind in settings is that Categories for Calendars/contacts have 12 sub Categories for every Category?!
So I have Insurance agent as a category, every other master list has this in it's list as well. If I de-select it, it overrides the master selection.

Confusing, I know, but that is how confusing it actually is.

According to her blog, Nadyne works for VMWare now....not Microsoft.

 

[tigres]

According to her blog, Nadyne works for VMWare now....not Microsoft.

That's ok, her sig here say MS currently. At any rate, I have a lot of respect for her; I just found it kind of silly to tell a poster to contact their MS professional for Outlook/Mac. It really is as stripped down as possible, not too much to do in terms of setup.

 

[mcolligon]

Default Signature Issue

You can set a default signature for each of your mail accounts.
1. On the Outlook menu, click Preferences.
2. Under E-mail, click Signatures .
3. Click Default Signatures.
4. Under Account, select the account for which you want to set a default signature.
5. Under Default signature, click the pop-up menu in the selected row, and then click a signature name.

Note If you have multiple accounts, you must set the default signature separately for each account.

I have done the above and was completely aware of how to do it, but it does not work. When I choose to send an email from Account A or Account B I still get the default signature for Account A. Using the above referenced instructions, Account A has default signature A checked and Account B has default signature B checked.

Is anyone else having this issue?

More importantly, does anyone have a solution?

THanks,

Mike

 

[mcolligon]

Default Signature Issue

Here's the deal (for me and others I have found on different forums)

Yes - its easy enough to set multiple signatures and apply them to different accounts.

However, when you choose a new email and then change which account you are sending from - nada - you are stuck with the default signature.

Evening after switching off the default signature - It STILL displays on new messages.

How much do they pay the developers at MS??

Exactly the issue that I am having. Is there a solution?

Thanks

 

[Moonraker069]

Exactly the issue that I am having. Is there a solution?

Thanks

Here's a work around for the default signature issue, assuming you have the signatures setup properly for the accounts:

1) Click new email icon - Signature and Account From will default to default account
2) Select From field with the arrows on the right of the field - Signature will not change - this is the issue
3) Select the text of the default signature - highlight it by click and drag
4) On the ribbon for the new mail window, select the appropriate signature from the drop down - Your signature will change to whatever you select
5) Bob's your uncle

We'll have to wait to see if this is ever addressed in the code... like the calendar syncing, the side-by-side calendars, and the distribution lists issues.

 

[parkiebear]

You can set a default signature for each of your mail accounts.
1. On the Outlook menu, click Preferences.
2. Under E-mail, click Signatures .
3. Click Default Signatures.
4. Under Account, select the account for which you want to set a default signature.
5. Under Default signature, click the pop-up menu in the selected row, and then click a signature name.

Note If you have multiple accounts, you must set the default signature separately for each account.

I am new to Mac, but have used Outlook on PCs for a couple of years, and I was stumped; I appreciate the clarity of your instructions!