Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Mischa — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:45:34 GMT

Just switched form PC to MBP. Love it, only annoying thing unability to import my data from my 'old' Oulook 2007 pst file. Tried O2M but that didn't work quite right. Mail was converted to mbox and imported into Entourage. But contacts and calendar get screwed up. Calendar items have to be imported to iCal first, then synced to Entourage. Ruins my data. Categories gone, all-day events visualle cover the entire day instead of appearing on top om my day view.

Please, let me import my pst file in Office 2008, including:

- categories

- proper display

- contact pictures (they do appear in iCal, but nog in Entourage)

- Notes

- Tasks

Hope you keep up the great work and continue to listen to these power-users, I am confident we will be pleasantly surprised in 2008!!!

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Bruce — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:02:09 GMT

First, I honestly want to thank the MBU for Office 2004, because it made my migration from PC to MAC three years ago so much easier. I don’t know that I could have possibly jumped from PC/Outlook to Mail/AddressBook/iCal in my “mostly PC” corporate environment without that tool. I’m looking forward to Office 2008.

Archiving:

- Obviously, as requested elsewhere throughout this thread the ability to import/export .pst files interoperable with Outlook, versus .pst files, would be exceedingly, overwhelmingly beyond wonderful (and so obvious as to lead one to ask why this even needs to be a topic for consideration).

- More specifically, I would like the ability to create archives of specific sections of my Entourage database, (like specific folders from my mailbox or specific Contact or Calendar categories), rather than having to archive the entire Entourage database each time I want to create an archive. If I recall (its been a long time), Outlook allows you to select specifically what data/folder(s) you want to create an archive of. I’ve never found that ability in Entourage (with the exception of being able to export my entire contacts database as a single file).

Seamless Syncing with my iPhone:

- Currently, I have to set up syncing between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook, and the result has been more or less a nightmare. Duplication of all day events in my calendars, duplication of contacts in Entourage and my Address Book, and even contact/AddressBook “data mixing”, (which I can only describe as taking the phone number of one contact and populating that number into other contacts, etc.) After one iPhone sync, my 1100 contacts were turned into more than 9000 contacts! Absolute nightmare, anything to improve this would be wonderful.

Better Syncing between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook:

- By the way, the iPhone problem above isn’t limited to just when I’m syncing the phone. Having first enabled syncing between Entourage and iCal/Address Book when I got the iPhone, the problems mentioned above happen when I’ve got syncing turned on between Entourage and iCal/AddressBook – regardless of whether or not I am actually doing an iPhone Sync. It is great to have the syncing functionality, but it needs to work without destroying my data.

Checking for duplicate entries, merging duplicates.

- For those nightmare occasions when everything does get duplicated in my calendar or contact database, the ability to run a quick “check for duplicates” (such as offered in Apple’s Address Book) would be nice.

Dragging/Dropping Email messages into Calendar to establish a new event or reminder.

- Loved the ability to do this in Outlook. I know there is a script for this in Entourage today, I use it every day, but dragging and dropping from my inbox to the Calendar icon to launch this functionality is just so much easier.

Establishing a group calendar event/invitee list from a new Mail message.

- Frequently I find myself writing an email, or responding to one, and figure out mid-way through composing that I want to invite several people to a meeting to discuss the topic of the email message. What happens with Entourage now is that I have to get out of my email, open a new calendar event, and invite attendees to that event. What I would like to do is copy everyone that I want at the meeting directly from the email I am composing, and open a calendar “invite” event that the recipient list can then respond to in a manner that blocks their calendars (exactly as if I were setting up the meeting from Calendar and inviting attendees). I know that right now I can link the email to a new or existing calendar event, but that doesn’t seem to accomplish the same thing from the standpoint of inviting attendees and having their acceptance of the meeting blocked on their own Calendars.

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Nayan Naik — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:56:25 GMT

ppp ppp sssss ttttttttttttttt

ppp ppppp sss ttttt

pppp ppp sss ttttt

ppp ppp sssss ttttt

ppp ppp ssss ttttt

ppppppp ssss ttttt

ppp ssss ttttt

ppp ssssss ttttt

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Steven — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:34:49 GMT

What is still a nuissance driving me nuts and what is missing

* .PST File Import AND EXPORT

Port the Outlook2003/2007 .pst (Data folders/Personal folders) to Entourage.

* Ability to load/unload the .pst (personal folder files)

I cannot understand no one yeet complained about sitting on years of e-mails.

There must be a way to archive e-mails to an external database or .pst file, so I can put old e-mails to the "archive/shelf" and retrieve it at a later time.

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

deepwater — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:54:35 GMT

Excel needs unlimited rows, a million is not enough in the "real world"...

If x-spread can do it for free, why can't micro$oft do it for money?

lets stop the OS wars and get to work!

anything else is un-American.

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

notafanboy — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:07:14 GMT

PLEASE SYNC WITH I-PHONE!

I don't care how you do it, just do it!

...through I-sync (plugin/software update with apple)

...through ported ActiveSync for i-phone

Everyone I know that has an i-phone is depending on the next generation of office for mac/exchange server to come up with a simple, easy way to sink.

Thanks!!!

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Rob — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:21:06 GMT

Is it just me, or is the sneak peek web site really buggy? In both Firefox and Safari 3, the flash panel is often empty, slow to load, or starts and stops.

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Will — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:04:50 GMT

Has you decided what editions of Office 2008 you will be releasing Mac? Will there be an affordable 'Home' edition, like there is in Windows Office 2007?

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Grand Pooh Bah — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:09:18 GMT

I sure hope the Entourage database is robust enough to handle my mail archives this time around -- Entourage 2004 ate 12 gigabytes of my mail last year. If it weren't for backups, I wouldn't have been able to salvage everything and dump it into the more reliable (and standard) MBOX format. I sure hope Entourage can dump mail to multiple databases a la Outlook 2001 for OS9.

re: Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

Jeff — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:25:29 GMT

This is largely disappointing news indeed. In response to Tom though, I think MS's true strategy is obvious here. While I am sure that the MacBU is working as hard as it can to bring a lot of these features, I believe that the body of MS is deliberately stalling their efforts for the reasons that many of you have already stumbled upon. If MS turns out a crippled version of the Office apps, what will that drive people to do who really need it? Buy the Windows version of Office. And guess what? That ALSO means that they have to pay for a license for Windows! MS has no real interest in supporting the Mac beyond a few good souls in the MacBU. MS's primary interest is in focusing on its core Windows technologies and maintaining its market dominance. The MacBU may be quite profitable for them, but I'll bet you that selling a license for Win Office + Windows to a Mac user running Parallels is far more lucrative for them.