Syncing Blackberry with Outlook/Entourage

[billyb]

Hope someone knows more about this than me...I've been using only Macs for so long that I'm having trouble remembering the issues with switching from PCs.

I've got a friend who's thinking of switching to Mac, but he's got an addiction to Outlook, which he synchronizes with his Blackberry. The Blackberry's for work, so that has to work, and I've got no experience with thiss. So, 2 questions:

1. Is it possible to get all the functionality of Outlook in Entourage? I haven't used either in a very long time, so I don't know how equivalent they are.

2. Would he be able to sync his BB with Entourage like he does with Outlook? No issues sync'ing contacts, calendar, and whatever else people with BB's sync?

Thanks very much. Just trying to help out a buddy.

-bb

 

[mkrishnan]

I can't really speak to the quality of Entourage... some people really like it, and others don't really care for it. It has most of the core functionality of Outlook, but I don't think it has every single feature. It also does have some nice features of its own, like a project management center, although I have not used this in depth.

I think the basic model is that Entourage provides data to an OS X core service called Sync Services, which arbitrages information synchronized between programs and devices. So this program is what makes contacts available between OS X Address Book and Entourage, and between Entourage and a device that you sync.

To get the Blackberry to Sync, you must use free Pocketmac software (or else some people pay for Missing Sync's software -- the latter does more, but I personally prefer Pocketmac, which has been, for me, simple, reliable, and straightforward).

In PocketMac, you can choose to have the BB sync specifically with whichever of these sources you wish (i.e. you can have contacts pulled from Address Book and Entourage, or either one, or both).

For what it's worth, I have an 8700g but I sync it with the Apple apps and not Entourage.

 

[martinmartin]

Hope someone knows more about this than me...I've been using only Macs for so long that I'm having trouble remembering the issues with switching from PCs.

I've got a friend who's thinking of switching to Mac, but he's got an addiction to Outlook, which he synchronizes with his Blackberry. The Blackberry's for work, so that has to work, and I've got no experience with thiss. So, 2 questions:

1. Is it possible to get all the functionality of Outlook in Entourage? I haven't used either in a very long time, so I don't know how equivalent they are.

2. Would he be able to sync his BB with Entourage like he does with Outlook? No issues sync'ing contacts, calendar, and whatever else people with BB's sync?

Thanks very much. Just trying to help out a buddy.

-bb

I use Entourage with a BB pearl. I only sync my Calendar (using PocketMac), and it works fine so I would assume contacts, notes, etc. would also work fine.

One word of caution, though, if your friend is planning on transferring his emails from Outlook to Entourage, he is in for some trouble. I had thousands of emails that I brought over and I had to manually do it in groups of 100 or so (any more and it would slow to a halt). Entourage doesn't use .pst files like Outlook.

By the way, I haven't found anything that I can't do in Entourage that I did in Outlook.

Cheers.

 

[mkrishnan]

One word of caution, though, if your friend is planning on transferring his emails from Outlook to Entourage, he is in for some trouble. I had thousands of emails that I brought over and I had to manually do it in groups of 100 or so (any more and it would slow to a halt). Entourage doesn't use .pst files like Outlook.

For the OP's friend, something like this might be worth looking into:

http://www.littlemachines.com/

 

[martinmartin]

For the OP's friend, something like this might be worth looking into:

http://www.littlemachines.com/

This is basically the process I followed for transferring the emails: http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/9928

I actually downloaded the program above but couldn't get the 'trial' version to work (kept getting some sort of error). I wanted to test it before buying it, but it was not meant to be. Definitely worth looking into, though.

 

[newbiemom]

I use Entourage with a BB pearl. I only sync my Calendar (using PocketMac), and it works fine so I would assume contacts, notes, etc. would also work fine.

One word of caution, though, if your friend is planning on transferring his emails from Outlook to Entourage, he is in for some trouble. I had thousands of emails that I brought over and I had to manually do it in groups of 100 or so (any more and it would slow to a halt). Entourage doesn't use .pst files like Outlook.

By the way, I haven't found anything that I can't do in Entourage that I did in Outlook.

Cheers.

Can you please tell me how to move my Outlook files into Entourage? I haven't been able to find any help with this. Please be specific, I'm new at this. Thanks so much in advance for any help. I really need my emails from my PC!