I'm looking for someone w/ experience w/ Entourage 2004 and Exchange Server.

I'm a pretty advanced Outlook user and just got my MacBook Pro. Because I have 1 of only 2 Macs connected to our PC network, I am my own support. In Outlook, I set up a Personal Folder that pulled my email, calendar, contacts, etc from the Server and put it on a local PST file.

On Entourage, I can't seen to find how to do the same thing. I have a local file and an Exchange Server file. I can't seem to combine them so that my local file will automatically connect. Anyone?

Entourage 2004 is a bit different. Your Exchange Server file is a local file/mailstore where all of your mail/calendaring/etc is kept locally. It sychronizes with the Exchange server based on your preferences found in Account Settings->Accounts->Your Account->Advanced. The local folder you have is a mail store for account not using Exchange but another protocol such as POP3. The idea is to import your current PST info to Entourage then go on your merry way. One good thing about this scheme is that if your local mailstore gets corrupted you can pull get the data back from the server.

Hope that helps!

Quick edit to add a link to the PST import tool.

Another quick edit to clarify: PST's are not supported in anyway in Entourage. You can only import the data from an existing PST into your mailstore.

I think Ken C. is the only apple geek in these parts.

Apparently not. Look up.

I am one, too, but I can't add anthing to LightiningJoe's excellent reply.

What Peter said. Joe's advice sounds sound to me.

Thanks Joe. Yeah, I used the Exchange Server to transfer my Outlook PS mail to a local folder in Entourage. In the process, my online account grew so big that i got blocked from email for a day...

Problem is I don't like to keep all my mail and info on the server as it takes space, which I'm limited on.

Here's a question. I'm w/in my company firewall. Yahoo IM works fine on my PC laptop. I connect w/ in the firewall w/ my Mac and IM doesn't connect. Any idea on what settings I need to look at? There's no special firewall s/w running on my PC that I'm aware of.

The only thing I can think of off hand is that there is a proxy setting that is configured on you PC but not on your Mac.

In reply to:

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Problem is I don't like to keep all my mail and info on the server as it takes space, which I'm limited on.

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Yep, Entourage is very limited. I archive my older mail on my Windows desktop in PST files. That way I can access the active Exchange store from any platform without it being too big. Being a sysadmin makes things easier though: Guess who controls the user mailbox store size on Exchange?

Oops, missed something. On your "Account Options" tab make sure to uncheck "Leave a copy of each message" checkbox in unchecked. That way the mail is stored only on your computer and your Exchange mailstore won't be oversized.

funny you mention that checkbox which I FORGOT to do. I created a POP account on my Entourage account and realized that it downloaded 300 emails from my Yahoo to my computer. I decided to keep the mail online and deleted all my mails from the computer. Yup, that's right, I deleted 4 months of email by mistake... Oh well, at least it wasn't critical.

I fixed the Yahoo IM. Seems I need Firewall w/ no Proxies set, but you can't get to that w/o IM signing in. Nice chicken and the egg problem. Now I found that iChat has the same issue but at least I have access to the connections.

The reason for all this hassle is that I moved from a PC to a MacBook Pro at work. A little challenging since mine will be one of only 2 Macs on a network of over 2500 employees using PCs and workstations. It's great looking, high wow factor. Cool features and I'm a fan of OSX, I was starting to really hate XP. However, I really can't wait for the Unversal Binaries. Adobe Reader and Firefox crash daily, which is really surprising on an Mac environment.

Why do you need Adobe Reader when OS X does pdfs natively?

I wish I would have waited for the MacBook Pro. A few months ago my boss asked me if I wanted a laptop. When I said yes he said "well go ahead and order what you want then, since you do all that anyway." So I ordered a 17" Powerbook G4 1.67GHz loaded up with 1GB RAM (upgraded it to 2GB later), 120GB HDD, SuperDrive, Bluetooth mouse & Keyboard, the works. Got Office 2004 through our MS Gold Partner membership. Love OS X.

Love the laptop. But from what I've seen the new MB Pro is much more responsive, the OS and apps either x86 native or Universal Binaries. Rosetta apps are a dog as far as I can tell so far from online reviews.

My boss was amused when he saw the boxes on our receiving dock. Everyone in the company kept coming around while I was unpacking the system. I must say the WOW factor is much greater than just another Dell machine in brown cardboard. The other admin got one too a month later, after the Boss and I messed with him a little: Boss "You're just the junior admin, I think a standard Dell laptop will do." Me: "Yup, gotta make your bones before you get the good stuff." We've had a heck of a lot of fun playing with them. I think we've both blown them up and rebuilt them a dozen times. Hard to make a Mac completely unstable but you can do it if you really want to.

Yeah, I got my new 15" Powerbook at work in December... durn. Oh well, it's a significant upgrade over what I was using (12" Powerbook), at least in viewable area. And hell, I'm only going to have it for another 2 weeks. New job!

Sizewise, I compared my Macbook to another 17" in our office. My Macbook is only slightly smaller. The screen is pretty close in size.

The other problem I have is the support for Virtual PC. None at this point, which makes it hard for me to run any PC only s/w. I'm sure an "approved" Windows will appear at some point, I can't wait.

I'm hoping pretty hard on that one. There's got to be some sort of emulator (or non-emulator!) coming out at some point.