Never installed Entourage with Office 2008 because I heard it was bad and satisfied with iCal, Mail, and Address Book. Reading reviews that the new Outlook is really good, What’s your opinion, better than iCal, Mail and Address Book?
Will Outlook work with MobileMe sync? Probably not, but wonder if Outlook would sync with iCal Mail Address Book, which then iCal Mail Address Book would sync with MobileMe. I would have 2 sets of data (Outlook and Apple’s), but that’s ok with me.
If I buy Office 2011 without Outlook, could I just buy Outlook later? My current job doesn’t use Outlook, but other co-workers have used parts of Outlook for Windows either just the Calendar function, or both the email client plus Calendar.
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Royce
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Outlook 2011 better than Mail and Address Book? Work with MobileMe?
Comments: 13 Responses to “Outlook 2011 better than Mail and Address Book? Work with MobileMe?”
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Well, I don't know.
I've bought Office 2011. But I won't be trying out Outlook.
In order to do so, I'd really need to -use- it. That would be very time consuming and it would also interrupt a lot of my business.
So Ill probably never have an answer for which is better.
As for whether it syncs with MobileMe, I'm pretty sure not.
I'm with you in in being satisfied with iCal, Mail and Address Book, so I'm not looking to switch to anything anyway.
Outlook 2011 doesn't sync with Caldev or Google Cal. Very disappointing. It feels like buying a new car but being told the brakes would be in a future update :(
Well that makes decision easier, I'll just get Office without Outlook, and worry about needing Outlook in the future depending on where I work in the future.
As an total convert to Apple OS X and a MAC in a predominantly MS professional environment and IT infrastructure, there were several challenges with both Entourage and Apple Snow leopard implementation of Exchange integration.
Entourage, did not not keep pace with Exchange servers updates and upgrade, resulting in poor Global address book integration, rendering it practically useless, for corporate use as a serious mail client for Exchange.
Similar problems plagued Snow Leapards support for Exchange wrt to Mail, iCal and Address book. By and large this all worked well with Exchange except for a few un acceptable quirks. Particularly with iCal eg:
iCal would concatenate and loose portions of a calendar invite. Often cutting out vital infomration such as webex details or concall numbers (Unacceptable)
iCal would not let you physically delete event or appointment, it would only let you cancel old or stale appointments. If I set my calendar to purge anything older then 1 month, then all events older then 1 month would decline (and NOT delete) sending declines uncontrollably to others in the organization including executives in my company. (NOT COOL!)
Office 2011 seems to have restored balance back to my work life with native outlook type of performance (if not better) and features, with very reliable Exchange integration eliminating most of all of the major foibles of past attempts. IT IS sufficient for me to run AND not have to rely on a fall back option of Outlook running in a Parallels session, and Office communicator has also been reinstated, allowing me to re-establish my "presence" in the corporate rank and file.
Is it the right choice as a mail client for Google Mail, or POP / IMAP mail users? Not really.... as there are too many power user features that only Outlook and corporate mail users would derive value from analogous in the PC world, of people who used Outlook express compared to people who use Outlook. (I would never recommend Outlook 2011 to my elderly parents for example).
WRT to Mobile me and Synch Services. I've learned the hardware that that over doing things things with syching can get you into deep water, fast.
My Iphone and Ipad sych to theExchange server just fine by themselves, so synching to MobileMe doesn't bring much additional value, except duplicating another data store. Outlook 2011 does allow you to Synch contacts to Mobile Me , which makes total sense ( in case you get fired, or connection to the Exchange server lets you down).
Syching to iCal is not supported, however for reason mentioned above, I don't miss it - I also dont need 2 calendar apps reminding me of Calendar events on my Mac.
Thanks for that report Kiwi!
Thanks for the great feedback. I'll get Outlook only if necessary in a corporate environment.
Do you keep personal appointments (Cal events) on Outlook? Outlook lets you sync their contacts to MobileMe, so you can have 2 sets of contacts -- Address Book (personal & perhaps some work) and Outlook's contacts (all work). Ideally, I like to do that kind of sync'ing with calendar events. Have Outlook hold all work related calendar events, but iCal would have both work and personal, since often I can't make a personal cal event without consulting my work calendar.
Perhaps the solution lies with the iPhone or iPad? Have iPhone sync with both Exchange and MobileMe, and I believe with iPhone I can turn on and off various calendars on iPhone. I could turn on all calendars and they would all show up on iPhone calendar.
Hmmm, can iCal sync with Exchange? If yes, I could do the same with iCal on Mac. I just don't want my personal calendar events on Exchange.
@Royce: You can set iCal up to do this ie maintain one calendar based on a mobileme or Google Calendar, and in parallel have iCal sych to Exchange server for work events. Beaware of the 2 issues I experienced and mentioned above with iCal integration with exchange.
a: Event information can get cut off.
b: iCal send declines to meeting invitations that appear in the past.
c: Scheduling meetings in iCal for exchange is dependent on ability to access the global address book. This as not reliable particularly while off the corporate network.
My recommendation is to try iCAL as a read only view of your corp calendar so you can use it to provide the oversight you need. Use Office 2011 however for daly calendar management.
These issues might be setup issue in nature, which you could have better success with than I, however my experience and ability to resolve these issues (as a rogue MAC user in a MS corporate environment) meant that I was not able to call upon IT support to help resolve the issues I was experiencing.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Question: I use both iCal AND Outlook 2011, because they are both good (and bad) at different things. However, in Outlook, my iCal appointments don't show. The full day appointments do, but not the time-specific appointments. Doesn't make sense to me. Any thoughts? Anyone?
Second, in Address Book, I start getting jumbled addresses (such as a certain person and my email will be in place, not his). Thoughts? Outlook has done that in the past, too. Very frustrating, esp. when you have 1,000 contacts.
Wow! So disappointed that I can not sync to iCal from Outlook 2011. Just upgraded today from Entourage. What a mistake. Guess I will have to wait until some undisclosed time in the future for it to work. Way to go Microsoft.
Jeffrey White
Read all about it from the Microsofties themselves: "Microsoft explains decision to delay calendar sync in Outlook 2011 for Mac"
http://www.officeformachelp.com/2010/11/microsoft-explains-decision-to-delay-calendar-sync-in-outlook-for-mac/
Does Microsoft Outlook sync to the iphone 4?
Sync what? Email? Email would sync to the server, depending on what type of email server you have. Typically the server would sync to one or more email clients (Outlook, Mail, iPhone, iPad, etc).
I have just upgraded my Mac OS to 10.6, my Microsoft suite to 2011 (including Outlook), and been migrated to our organization's new exchange server (too many technology changes in a couple weeks' time!). I have an iPhone and have been relying completely on Mac Mail (for our old IMAP server), iCal, and Address Book on my Mac, which I've been synching with my phone via Mobile Me.
However, my understanding is that the Exchange server works best with Outlook, and I'm considering moving over. Can anyone tell me if there are pros or cons to sticking with the Mac programs or changing to Outlook?
Our department has also been considering setting up a google calendar for internal coordination of events and meetings, but my sense is that maybe Exchange would work for this? In the past we were using iCal, but our PC users couldn't access the department calendar.
I would appreciate any suggestions I can get!