Microsoft Entourage
Encyclopedia
Microsoft Entourage was an e-mail client
and personal information manager
developed by Microsoft
for Mac OS
8.5 and higher. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001
office suite
; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS
included Outlook Express 5
. The last version was Entourage: Mac 2008, part of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
, released on January 15, 2008. Entourage was replaced by Outlook for Macintosh in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
, released on October 26, 2010.
Entourage provided email
, calendar
, address book
, task list, note list, and project manager. With Entourage 2004, Microsoft began offering a Project Center, which allowed the user to create and organize projects. Information may come from within Entourage or outside the program. Entourage supported retrieving email using POP
, IMAP, and (for Microsoft Exchange
servers) WebDAV
.
Entourage 2008 featured a new "My Day" utility, which assists in organizing one's day, and cites (in the welcome message) improvements to search speed, "to do" flags, improved junk mail and phishing
protection, as well as quick navigation via favorites and customizable toolbars.
search engine and AppleScript; however, the use of a monolithic database made it difficult to back up incrementally with Time Machine. Entourage also maintained a separate Address Book, but allowed synchronization of contacts and calendar events through Sync Services
.
suite, Entourage did not share a name with its Microsoft Windows
counterpart. Microsoft claimed that Entourage was intended "to address an entirely different audience". Entourage had its origins in Outlook Express
5 on the Mac, as well as Claris Emailer and contained "no ported code, and no Office code". Nevertheless, Microsoft has positioned Entourage as a "similar" product for Macintosh customers on Exchange servers.
Subsequent versions of Entourage added some of the missing functionality. However, full parity with Outlook as an Exchange client was never available in Entourage 2008. Synchronization of tasks and notes with an Exchange server was not available. Many Exchange users have been vocal in denouncing Microsoft's omission of these features. Microsoft claimed to have prioritized "reliability" over expanded Exchange support in Entourage 2008.
One major shortcoming of Entourage was its inability to handle complex HTML. While messages could be received and viewed correctly, they could not be forwarded without all formatting being stripped out. As an example, an airline confirmation received from, say, Imaginary Airlines, could not be forwarded without all of the pictorial information being reduced to links, rendering the e-mail unreadable. A workaround for this was to choose "Forward as attachment" which forwarded the message as a message/rfc822 file, and preserved complex HTML formatting.
An additional limitation was the inability to attach what is referred to as an "Item" in Outlook to a message while it was being composed since there was no menu choice to allow this. Instead, a user needed to find the item to be forwarded, i.e., a Contact, select it, then choose Forward as vCard from the menu.
It was also not possible to create or manage server side rules on the Exchange server, so filtering only worked when the Entourage application was running.
and could not read Outlook archived emails without first re-importing them back into the main Windows Outlook database.http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?target=1210e1d5-8d1c-47fc-8bd8-d14ce8d490de1033&clr=99-2-0&parentid=c47a6d08-471b-43bf-acfe-f530d36d939e1033&ep=7&CTT=Category&MODE=pv&locale=en-US&usid=26149fe0-9f81-4b5d-aa86-9e5daf5d02ec As a result, it was impossible to directly transfer email data from Outlook (Windows) into Entourage (Mac).
Although Microsoft had released a PST Import Tool for Entourage, this did not directly solve the problem of exporting data from Windows to Mac, because this utility could only import PST files from Outlook 2001 for the Mac.
One could import a Windows Outlook 2000 compatible PST to Mac Outlook 2001, and then use the utility to import into Entourage. To address this, Microsoft made Mac Outlook 2001 available for free download at http://download.microsoft.com/download/Outlook2001Mac/Install/1.0/MacOS/EN-US/Outlook2001en.bin
However, this wasn't a straight-forward solution for all Mac users, because Outlook 2001 depended on the Classic Environment to run, which is not readily supported in the current era of Intel Macs. In saying this, Outlook for Office 2011 for Intel Macs, is able to import Outlook .pst files from Windows; however, data will be stored as many individual files, rather than in a single database such as .pst or the Entourage database.
Macworld indicates that Windows Outlook messages can be transferred to Apple Mail or Entourage by using Mozilla Thunderbird
as an intermediate agent. Thunderbird on Windows is used to import the mail from Outlook. Then the converted mail file is moved from the Windows Thunderbird directory to the Mac and the import feature is used on Mac Mail or Entourage.
However, message attachments will be lost in the conversion to Thunderbird.
Commercial third-party software (e.g. Emailchemy) is available to facilitate the transfer of Outlook data to Entourage. But those using the mbox format will not be able to respect any subfolder hierarchy since the mbox format doesn't support it.
Other alternative solutions include synchronizing: to an iPod Touch or iPhone through iTunes; using Apple MobileMe service; using an IMAP-enabled email provider; using a Microsoft Exchange server.
{Sources contradicted each other as to ver. 4 or ver. 5}
E-mail client
An email client, email reader, or more formally mail user agent , is a computer program used to manage a user's email.The term can refer to any system capable of accessing the user's email mailbox, regardless of it being a mail user agent, a relaying server, or a human typing on a terminal...
and personal information manager
Personal information manager
A personal information manager is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to Personal information management as a field of study...
developed by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
8.5 and higher. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
office suite
Office suite
In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a collection of programs intended to be used by knowledge workers...
; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
included Outlook Express 5
Outlook Express
Outlook Express is an email and news client that is included with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it is also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and is available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9...
. The last version was Entourage: Mac 2008, part of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Office 2008 was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008...
, released on January 15, 2008. Entourage was replaced by Outlook for Macintosh in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and is comparable to Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows....
, released on October 26, 2010.
Overview
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
, address book
Address book
An address book or a name and address book is a book or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields...
, task list, note list, and project manager. With Entourage 2004, Microsoft began offering a Project Center, which allowed the user to create and organize projects. Information may come from within Entourage or outside the program. Entourage supported retrieving email using POP
Post Office Protocol
In computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern...
, IMAP, and (for Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...
servers) WebDAV
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
.
Entourage 2008 featured a new "My Day" utility, which assists in organizing one's day, and cites (in the welcome message) improvements to search speed, "to do" flags, improved junk mail and phishing
Phishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
protection, as well as quick navigation via favorites and customizable toolbars.
Features
Entourage supported some Mac OS technologies, like the SpotlightSpotlight (software)
Spotlight is a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Spotlight is a selection-based search system, which creates a virtual index of all items and files on the system. It is designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items on the computer,...
search engine and AppleScript; however, the use of a monolithic database made it difficult to back up incrementally with Time Machine. Entourage also maintained a separate Address Book, but allowed synchronization of contacts and calendar events through Sync Services
ISync
iSync is a software application published by Apple Inc. It runs only under Mac OS X and is used to synchronize contact and calendar data from Address Book and iCal with many non-Apple SyncML-enabled mobile phones via a Bluetooth or USB connection. Support for many devices is built-in, with newer...
.
Comparison to Outlook
Unlike the other applications in the Mac version of the Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
suite, Entourage did not share a name with its Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
counterpart. Microsoft claimed that Entourage was intended "to address an entirely different audience". Entourage had its origins in Outlook Express
Outlook Express
Outlook Express is an email and news client that is included with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it is also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and is available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9...
5 on the Mac, as well as Claris Emailer and contained "no ported code, and no Office code". Nevertheless, Microsoft has positioned Entourage as a "similar" product for Macintosh customers on Exchange servers.
As a client for Microsoft Exchange
Entourage had included support for Microsoft Exchange servers since August 4, 2003, when the Exchange Update for Entourage X was released. This early release required the use of IMAP for mail connectivity and WebDAV for address and calendar functionality. (Subsequent versions have dropped the requirement for IMAP and rely solely on WebDAV.) Users complained of the lack of a variety of functions present in Outlook for Windows and Outlook 2001.Subsequent versions of Entourage added some of the missing functionality. However, full parity with Outlook as an Exchange client was never available in Entourage 2008. Synchronization of tasks and notes with an Exchange server was not available. Many Exchange users have been vocal in denouncing Microsoft's omission of these features. Microsoft claimed to have prioritized "reliability" over expanded Exchange support in Entourage 2008.
One major shortcoming of Entourage was its inability to handle complex HTML. While messages could be received and viewed correctly, they could not be forwarded without all formatting being stripped out. As an example, an airline confirmation received from, say, Imaginary Airlines, could not be forwarded without all of the pictorial information being reduced to links, rendering the e-mail unreadable. A workaround for this was to choose "Forward as attachment" which forwarded the message as a message/rfc822 file, and preserved complex HTML formatting.
An additional limitation was the inability to attach what is referred to as an "Item" in Outlook to a message while it was being composed since there was no menu choice to allow this. Instead, a user needed to find the item to be forwarded, i.e., a Contact, select it, then choose Forward as vCard from the menu.
It was also not possible to create or manage server side rules on the Exchange server, so filtering only worked when the Entourage application was running.
Entourage import/export limitations
Entourage could not natively read Outlook Personal Folder files.pst
In computing, a Personal Storage Table is an open proprietary file format used to store copies of messages, calendar events, and other items within Microsoft software such as Microsoft Exchange Client, Windows Messaging, and Microsoft Outlook...
and could not read Outlook archived emails without first re-importing them back into the main Windows Outlook database.http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?target=1210e1d5-8d1c-47fc-8bd8-d14ce8d490de1033&clr=99-2-0&parentid=c47a6d08-471b-43bf-acfe-f530d36d939e1033&ep=7&CTT=Category&MODE=pv&locale=en-US&usid=26149fe0-9f81-4b5d-aa86-9e5daf5d02ec As a result, it was impossible to directly transfer email data from Outlook (Windows) into Entourage (Mac).
Although Microsoft had released a PST Import Tool for Entourage, this did not directly solve the problem of exporting data from Windows to Mac, because this utility could only import PST files from Outlook 2001 for the Mac.
One could import a Windows Outlook 2000 compatible PST to Mac Outlook 2001, and then use the utility to import into Entourage. To address this, Microsoft made Mac Outlook 2001 available for free download at http://download.microsoft.com/download/Outlook2001Mac/Install/1.0/MacOS/EN-US/Outlook2001en.bin
However, this wasn't a straight-forward solution for all Mac users, because Outlook 2001 depended on the Classic Environment to run, which is not readily supported in the current era of Intel Macs. In saying this, Outlook for Office 2011 for Intel Macs, is able to import Outlook .pst files from Windows; however, data will be stored as many individual files, rather than in a single database such as .pst or the Entourage database.
Macworld indicates that Windows Outlook messages can be transferred to Apple Mail or Entourage by using Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
as an intermediate agent. Thunderbird on Windows is used to import the mail from Outlook. Then the converted mail file is moved from the Windows Thunderbird directory to the Mac and the import feature is used on Mac Mail or Entourage.
However, message attachments will be lost in the conversion to Thunderbird.
Commercial third-party software (e.g. Emailchemy) is available to facilitate the transfer of Outlook data to Entourage. But those using the mbox format will not be able to respect any subfolder hierarchy since the mbox format doesn't support it.
Other alternative solutions include synchronizing: to an iPod Touch or iPhone through iTunes; using Apple MobileMe service; using an IMAP-enabled email provider; using a Microsoft Exchange server.
Version history
- Outlook ExpressOutlook ExpressOutlook Express is an email and news client that is included with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 through 6.0. As such, it is also bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and is available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9...
4 or 5 (Entourage's predecessor), included with Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh EditionMicrosoft Office 98 Macintosh EditionMicrosoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition is a Mac OS version of Microsoft Office unveiled at Macworld Expo/San Francisco on January 6, 1998. It introduced the Internet Explorer 4.0 browser and Outlook Express, an Internet e-mail client and usenet newsgroup reader...
(version 8)
{Sources contradicted each other as to ver. 4 or ver. 5}
- Entourage 2001, included with Microsoft Office 2001Microsoft Office 2001Microsoft Office 2001, launched in 2000, was the last Office suite for Mac OS, or the Classic operating system; it required Mac OS 8, although version 8.5 or later was recommended.-Applications:...
(version 9) - Entourage X, included with Office X (version X)
- Entourage 2004, included with Office 2004 for Mac (version 11)
- Entourage 2008, included with Office 2008 for Mac (version 12)
- Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition, separate download from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=10419 (version 13)
- Entourage was replaced by Outlook for Macintosh in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011Microsoft Office for Mac 2011Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and is comparable to Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows....
, released on October 26, 2010.
See also
- Microsoft Office for the Mac Version History
- Microsoft Office for Mac 2011Microsoft Office for Mac 2011Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and is comparable to Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows....
- Comparison of e-mail clientsComparison of e-mail clientsThe following tables compare general and technical features of a number of email client programs. Please see the individual products articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up to date.-General:...
- List of personal information managers
- Comparison of office suites
- Outlook add-insOutlook add-insOutlook Add-ins - small helping programs for the well-known Microsoft Outlook application. The main purpose of the add-ins is to add new functional capabilities into Microsoft Outlook and automate some routine operations...
- Microsoft OutlookMicrosoft OutlookMicrosoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
- Evolution
- KontactKontactKMail supports folders, filtering, viewing HTML mail, and international character sets. It can handle IMAP, IMAP IDLE, dIMAP, POP3, and local mailboxes for incoming mail. It can send mail via SMTP or sendmail...
- iCalICaliCal is a personal calendar application made by Apple Inc. that runs on the Mac OS X operating system. iCal was the first calendar application for Mac OS X to offer support for multiple calendars and the ability to publish/subscribe calendars to WebDAV server....
- Address BookAddress BookAddress Book is an address book for Apple's Mac OS X. It features various syncing features and integrates into the rest of the OS.-Features:*Exports and imports cards to and from vCard 3.0 format....
- Windows CalendarWindows CalendarWindows Calendar is a calendar application that is included with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It natively supports the iCalendar file format, and has the ability to publish and subscribe to web-based calendars by using HTTP and WebDAV...
- Windows ContactsWindows ContactsWindows Contacts is a contact manager which is included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 which replaced and retained most of the functionality of Windows Address Book. Windows Mail integrates with it. Windows Contacts uses a new XML-based schema format where each contact appears as an...
- List of applications with iCalendar support
External links
- Microsoft Entourage:Mac 2008 (official site)
- Inside Entourage by Amir - blog by M. Amir Haque in Microsoft Enterprise Messaging group
- Entourage Weblog (last updated June 2006)
- The Entourage Help Page
- The Entourage Help Blog
- Award Winning Entourage Recovery Solution
- Entourage recovery and Entourage repair solutions for all Entourage errors
- Repair & rebuild corrupt entourage database with Stellar Phoenix Entourage Recovery Software