Category Archives: Outlook

Q&A: Why doesn’t Outlook:Mac sync directly with mobile devices?

Via email, I got this question:

entourage used to sync directly with mobile devices like the palm, but replaced it in ent2008 with apple’s sync services. outlook does this too. why don’t you sync directly with mobile devices instead of doing through ical?

There’s two major reasons for supporting Sync Services instead of writing our own support: time, and being a good Apple citizen.

Today, there are dozens of mobile device manufacturers out there, and hundreds of different mobile devices.  Before the introduction of Sync Services, we had to write our own support for each of those devices.  There’s little commonality between the APIs that devices from different manufacturers use, so it’s a big investment in development time to support various multiple devices.  Further, as devices evolve, updates to the devices require updates to sync support.  Devices come out whenever they come out, which means that we had to be prepared at any time to start working on support for a new device.

The introduction of Sync Services in 10.2 offered up an opportunity for us to reduce our development costs, since we would only have to support a single sync instead of a myriad of different syncs.  Additionally, it gave us the chance to continue to be a good Apple citizen.  One of the major changes that Sync Services introduced is a back-end database called The Truth.  Apple’s own apps write to The Truth, and other clients can also read and write to this central database too.  That allows us to share our data with other clients, and to view data from other clients as well.

For more information about our Sync Services support and where we’re going from here, you can read this earlier blog post of mine: Q&A: Can I sync my Outlook:Mac 2011 calendar with Sync Services?

Office:Mac 2011 getting started videos now available

In anticipation of the upcoming October 26 launch of Office:Mac 2011, we’re updating our website with new content.  The latest update is a series of quick videos to introduce you to each of the applications.  These are all produced in-house, even down to the voiceovers: those are all MacBU employees that you hear on the videos.

Here’s links to the videos for each app:

Q&A: Is Outlook:Mac scriptable?

I saw this question on Twitter:

Anybody know if the new Outlook for Mac is scriptable? Seems to share same creator code as Entourage, but not same scripting interface…

Yes, Outlook has full support for AppleScript.  AppleScript is an important part of our internal testing for our suite.  We have always had great AppleScript support across the suite, and we have continually improved it in each version.  Outlook continues that tradition.

If you have existing Entourage scripts, you’re going to need to update them.  Outlook’s AppleScript dictionary has several differences to improve consistency and scriptability.  Pretty much anything that you could script in Entourage is also scriptable in Outlook.  The only places where you won’t be able to script something in Outlook that you could in Entourage are features not found in Outlook, such as newsgroup support and projects.

Speaking of twitter, you can follow me here, and there’s @officeformac too!

Q&A: How do I send a message from a different address in Outlook:Mac 2011?

I saw the following question on Twitter:

Dear lazyweb: anyone know how to send a message from a different address in Outlook Mac 2011? The From dropdown only shows my e-mail address

I’ve also got a couple of email addresses which just forward to my primary email address, and I sometimes want email to show as being sent from one of those other email addresses instead of my primary one.  For example, I have an @acm.org email address which just forwards to my primary email address, and sometimes I want to send mail which comes from that @acm.org email address.

To do this, you’ll need to set up an account for this email address in Outlook.  Go to the Preferences, then select Accounts.  In the bottom left corner, hit the plus sign and select “Email…”.  Enter in your name and the email address of this account.  Under “Server information”, leave the username, password, and incoming server fields blank.  Then, for your outgoing server information, enter in the details for one of your other email addresses.  You might need to click on “More options” to enter more details about how to authenticate to this server (usually just the username and password for the other email server that you’re using).

Speaking of twitter, you can follow me here (but be prepared for content beyond the confines of the Office).

Q&A: Can I sync my Outlook:Mac calendar with Sync Services?

Chris asked:

Does Outlook 2011 support calendar sync to sync services like Entourage did?

You’re correct: Entourage supported contacts and calendar sync via OS X Sync Services.  Some heavy-duty users experienced recurring issues with self-duplicating items, which made for a pretty painful experience.

To avoid these issues, we rebuilt our Sync Services support from the ground up for Outlook.  We set a very high quality bar, with the goal of avoiding those issues that our Entourage users faced.  For our initial v14.0.0 release, we got there with contacts.  But we didn’t get there with calendar.  Close, but no cigar.  Close wasn’t good enough, so we held off.  We wanted Outlook to be the most awesome Outlook ever.  We decided that we’d rather not support it on the initial release rather than have a version that didn’t meet our standards.

We will add calendar sync in a future update.  I don’t have a date to share yet for that.  The team is working hard on it, and I’ll post when it’s ready.

Macworld’s review of Outlook:Mac 2011

On Friday, Macworld published John Welch‘s review of Outlook:Mac 2011.  It’s a big review, but then there’s quite a lot to say about an all-new application, and John’s never been anything short of verbose anyway.  John’s a hard guy to please, so I feel like our four mice in his review would’ve been at least 4.5 mice in anyone else’s review!  His final advice is that “[i]f you need an Exchange client on the Mac, Outlook 2011 is the king … or just want something more than Mail, iCal, and Address Book give you, Outlook is a no-brainer”

Since it’s such a big review, there’s discussion of some of the subtle work that we’ve done to improve your experience when you’re using Outlook.  For example, he noticed one of my favourite features in the calendar.  If you select a specific category in the list on the left side, the events that are in the other categories fade out a little bit.  It’s subtle, but it’s a great visual indicator to help you focus on the category that you’ve selected.

John also talks about our Ribbon.  Here’s part of what he has to say:

The Ribbon is a bit of a controversy. It’s a user interface element in all of the Office programs that sits at the top of the document window and provides quick access to the most commonly used tools. At first, because of my experience with Entourage, I hated it. I like to have a minimal UI. After using it for a while, I’ve changed my opinion. The Ribbon is a bit garish, but it does keep the options I use frequently right where I need them. It doesn’t get in the way and it takes up a minimal amount of space.

If I had any complaints about the review, I have to admit that I find it perplexing that Outlook’s use of Exchange Web Services (and thus the requirement that it requires Exchange 2007 or later) gets three separate lines in the “cons” section at the top of the review.

Q&A: does Outlook:Mac support server-side rules?

Steve asks:

Can Outlook 2011 manage server side rules on an Exchange server?

We didn’t get that into the initial release.  We’re well aware that it’s something our users would like, so hopefully I’ll be able to share more news about it in the future.

In the interim, Mac users who are in an Exchange 2010 environment are able to create and edit server-side rules via Outlook Web Access (OWA).  OWA 2010 has full support for Safari and Firefox.  This is how I manage my extensive set of server-side rules today.

PC Magazine reviews Office:Mac 2011

As I’m sure you can imagine, my team here in MacBU has been following the early reviews of Office:Mac 2011 quite closely.  Whenever a new one gets posted, there’s a flurry of mail, not to mention Facebook and Twitter posts.

So far, my favourite line is from the PC Magazine review.  Here’s the quote that totally makes my day:

I like Apple Mail, iCal, and the OS X Address Book, but Outlook is more powerful and flexible than those three separate apps, and it’s one of the most powerful and best-designed apps ever written for OS X.

Having worked so hard on the user experience for Outlook, seeing someone call it “one of the most … best-designed apps ever written for OS X” has me turning cartwheels in the halls.

More reviews are forthcoming.  Mossberg hasn’t weighed in yet, and the full Macworld review hasn’t arrived either.  My fingers (and toes!) are crossed that they’re as positive as the ones I’ve seen so far.

Q&A: Will Outlook:Mac import my Entourage data?

Via a Twitter direct message, I was asked:

can i import my entourage data into outlook?

Yes!  For those of you who are currently using Entourage, you’ll be able to import your existing Entourage data into Outlook:Mac 2011.  We also support importing from Apple Mail, as well as importing PST files from Outlook for Windows.

You can follow me on twitter here, and you can also follow my team on twitter @officeformac.