Category Archives: Office:Mac 2011

Entourage, Exchange, Office:Mac 2011, Outlook, Q&A

Q&A: should I import my Entourage identity to Outlook:Mac?

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Via mail, I got this question:

I have Entourage EWS running now off Exchange Server 2010 and will be upgrading to Outlook. Do you recommend:
a) doing a fresh download of all mail and other data from the server when setting up Outlook, or
b) importing the data from Entourage into Outlook locally?

With a fresh download, you’re starting off with a clean slate.  This is important for someone like me who’s been using Entourage since 2004, since gunk can build up in your database.  But, with an import, you get the goodness of keeping all of your local data.  Since I have been using Entourage for years, and at one point I had a teensy Exchange account size limit, I’ve got lots upon lots of local data.

With every release, I’ve gotten into the habit of starting off with a clean slate.  For this release, that means that I first saved out all of my local mail (that’s the only local data that I have: all of my contacts, calendar, and so on live in Exchange).  I let Outlook start off with a clean slate, download my mail from Exchange and from my IMAP accounts, and then imported the local data.

To do this, in Entourage for Web Services, I saved all my local mail folders by dragging them out of Entourage and onto my desktop.  That creates .mbox files, which can then be imported into Outlook (as well as any other mail client which supports .mbox files, which is most of them).  I don’t have any other local data other than mail, but I’d do the same if I did have local contacts, calendar, notes, or tasks.

Then, after Outlook had downloaded all of my Exchange and IMAP data, I made sure that it would show my local data.  Go into the Preferences, then select General, and make sure that the box next to “Hide On My Computer folders” is not checked.  Then, I dragged those .mbox files into Outlook.

In my opinion, that’s the best of both worlds: I start fresh and still get to keep my reams and reams of local data.

Office:Mac 2011, Q&A

Q&A: where can I buy Office:Mac 2011?

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Someone emailed me to ask:

where can i buy office for mac?

Once we hit our release date of Tuesday, 26 October 2010, you’ll have plenty of options.  This list is nowhere near comprehensive, and is entirely US-focused because that’s where I live and thus it’s what I know about.  Commenters, feel free to add in other options.

For those of you who want to go to a bricks’n’mortar store to buy it, your friendly local Apple Store and Best Buy will have it.  Other authorised Apple outlets are likely to have it too, and I’ve already seen shelf signs for it at my local Fry’s.

Online, the fine folks at Amazon are accepting pre-orders.  In fact, as of this writing, it looks like they’ve got some discounts from the price for the Home and Student Edition ($10 off the single-license version and $20 off the three-license version), as well as for the Home and Business Edition ($25 off the single-license and $40 off the two-license version).

Office:Mac 2011, Outlook

Walt Mossberg: “by far the best Mac version of the suite I’ve used”

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Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed Office:Mac 2011, with a bit of an Outlook pun: Mac Users Are Getting New Outlook From Rival.  It starts out by saying that “[a] new, faster, better version of Microsoft Office is coming out Oct. 26”, and wraps up by saying that the “new Mac Office is by far the best Mac version of the suite I’ve used, and I can recommend it”.

Sandwiched between those two stellar lines, Mossberg notes that performance is “dramatically snappier” and says that Outlook is “fast and capable”.  He also notes improved compatibility and file fidelity between the two platforms, as well as some of our Mac-only features like dynamic reordering and Word’s full-screen view.

Getting Office:Mac 2011 out the door has been a long road.  It’s fantastic to see all of these great reviews come in.  I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks when it finally hits store shelves on October 26.

Office:Mac 2011, Outlook, Q&A

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

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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?

Excel, Office:Mac 2011, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word

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:

Office:Mac 2011, Outlook, Q&A

Q&A: Is Outlook:Mac scriptable?

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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!

Office:Mac 2011, Q&A

Q&A: How do I uninstall Office:Mac 2011?

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Perhaps in response to yesterday’s question about how to prepare for an Office 2011 install, I got the following question this morning via email:

I just installed Office 2011 last night, and noticed that there isn’t a “Remove Office” app like there was in Office 2008.  How do I uninstall Office if I need to?

We made some changes to our installation process in this release, and one result is that you only need to drag your Office folder to the Trash.  This is a great improvement over Office 2008, where people often simply dragged the Office folder to their trash without realising that there was a special application to do it.

Office:Mac 2011, Outlook, Q&A

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).

Office:Mac 2011, Q&A

Q&A: What should I do before installing Office:Mac 2011?

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Chris asked:

Just started using 2011 through volume license. Is there anything I should have done before installing?

Well, you’ve already installed, so it’s a bit late for you!  But I’ll answer this for anyone else who might be interested.

As a general rule of thumb for any kind of installation or upgrade, you should practice good computer hygiene.  Make sure that you’ve got a recent back-up.  For an Office:Mac installation or upgrade, your backup should include a copy of your Microsoft User Data folder.  This is especially important if you use Entourage, since that’s where all of your Entourage data (email, calendar events, rules, signatures, etc) is stored.

Before you install, you should make the decision about whether you want to keep the old version of Office:Mac around.  For most people, this isn’t necessary at all, although some folks like to keep the old version around just in case — the belt-and-suspenders approach to software.

Also, before you install, think about whether you actually need everything that comes with Office:Mac.  If you aren’t going to use everything, then you can use a custom installation to install only the pieces that you need.  For example, on my home computer, I always do a custom installation.  I know that my Spanish is pretty abysmal, so installing the Spanish proofing tools isn’t going to do me any good.  The proofing tools don’t take up a lot of space, but it somehow makes me feel better that I’m not spending a few MB on my hard drive for them.  I also don’t install the dock icons at home, because I launch all of my applications either automatically on start-up or via Spotlight.  Maybe it’s just that I’m picky, but I always do custom installations on my software (and the OS too!) to see if there’s anything in there that I don’t really need.

When I updated Office:Mac 2008 to Office:Mac 2011 on my laptop at home, I took the opportunity to do some clean-up.  Before upgrading, I gave my Entourage database some love: deleted a bunch of stuff, made sure that my folder structure still made sense, archived stuff that I didn’t need instant access to but still wanted to keep.  This isn’t necessary for an upgrade, but I did it because upgrade time is an excellent time to really take a look at things and figure out if there might be some cruft in there that you can get rid of.  It’s like moving into a new home.  You’re obviously taking most of your existing stuff with you, but it’s also a great chance to clean out your closet and your garage (and your study, and your CD collection, and and and … ) so that you’re not moving stuff that you don’t need any longer.

Office:Mac 2011

Macworld’s top ten features of Office:Mac 2011

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In Macworld’s continuing coverage of Office:Mac 2011, they posted their list of top ten features.  Here they are:

  1. Collaboration: In Word and PowerPoint, you can work on your document with other people at the same time.
  2. Compatibility: Aside from our usual goal of file fidelity between Office:Mac and Office for Windows, we’ve also added many features from Office for Windows.
  3. Outlook: Need I say more?
  4. Cloud: You can save to SharePoint or SkyDrive directly from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
  5. Ribbon: A better way to access features in all of the apps (and you can completely hide it if you like).
  6. Visual Basic: We brought Visual Basic for Applications 6.5 to Office 2011, and it rocks.  (In fact, that’s a whole ‘nother blog post of my favourite test case for VBA).
  7. Template Gallery: Aside from adding some awesome new templates to Office 2011, we’ve also made it easier for you to browse the templates, modify the templates, and view your most recently-opened documents.
  8. Dynamic reordering: This was a hard feature to name, and its codename came from the demo that we first used to show it off.  Remember Waldo?  We hid Waldo on a layer, and then used dynamic reordering to show that he was in there.
  9. Excel sparklines and pivot tables: Hello power Excel users, we have some awesome new features just for you!
  10. Protection: You’ve got much more control over what other people can do with your documents and emails.  For you Outlook users who are in an Exchange environment, for example, you can disallow recipients of your mail from printing or forwarding a mail.

I’m pretty happy with this top-ten list, and not only because I worked on many of the features listed herein.