Entourage Sync ate my computer

[Paul_Barnard]

Well Microsoft have succeeded in making my Mac experience as bad as the PC experience that caused me to switch a few years back.

I have been happily using Office 2004 for Mac for a number of years. I use Entourage for my work email and it has largely worked as advertised. The remote connectivity options were inferior to the newer Outlook versions but it was serviceable.

I have just upgraded to 2008 and it has basically destroyed my system.

I have two computers and keep them synchronized via .Mac. I use Apple Mail for my personal email accounts and iCal for my personal calendars (linked to Google calenders via Spanning Sync). All my work calendars, email and contacts are in Entourage. With 2004 I was syncing my contacts with Address Book and work calendar with iCal so that they would sync to my iPhone. This all just worked!!!

I installed 2008 and got connected to the exchange server at work. That was straightforward and seemed to be OK. Then I started suffering from issue 1.
1. Periodically the Calendar goes blank and doesn't comeback for several minutes.

So moving on... I selected for Entourage to sync with Address book and iCal. First sync went fine and every thing looks great. But then came issue number 2.
2. Every few minutes the number of contacts in Entourage jumped up. It looks like it is connecting to sync services and adding all the contacts again. Address Books contents are remaining unchanged so I assume the problem is between Entourage and Sync Services. So I have switched off Contact syncing.

So moving on to problem 3.
3. I have now connected my iPhone to sync it and it starts syncing the calendar and then I get a window popping up saying that Microsoft Sync Services has unexpectedly quit... Shortly after this the iTunes sync with my iPhone fails. So I can no longer sync the calendar to my iPhone. I have now switched off syncing of calendar in Entourage. Here is the realy bad bit. I still can't sync my iPhone!!!!!!! Despite having syncing disabled in preferences, the Microsoft Sync Service process still pops up as quit unexpectedly.

Bottom line. I have found no new functionality in Entourage that helps me do my work (I was hoping for much better Exchange support for remote working just like in Outlook) and it has turned a stable working environment on my system into a complete mess. I no longer have Entourage and iCal/AddresBook syncronised and I have lost syncronisation to my iPhone completely.

Thanks a bunch Microsoft.

Anyone know how I can completely eradicate 2008 from my system? I want to go back to 2004. It at least worked and I can see no improvements in the 2008 offering. What a waste of $260.

 

[Diane Ross]

Well Microsoft have succeeded in making my Mac experience as bad as the PC
experience that caused me to switch a few years back.

Sync has been a nighmare for some users with duplicates or no syncing. The
problem is not all Microsoft¹s fault. Something has changed in Sync with
Leopard and things are just not working. I would like to see an alert from
Microsoft to warn users about sync problems. I hope you had a backup.

You asked about going back.

Applications don¹t have the ability to revert to an older version.

You can manually move your mail back. Hopefully, you still have your old
2004 Identity so you only have to move your new mail back.

Drag folders to the desktop as MBOX files. These can be dragged into most
email applications. You can also Export as .rge files. Entourage 2004 can
recognize these. Entourage X cannot.

Sorry you had such a bad experience.

 

[Justin de Lima]

@Diane

How can you say the sync issue is not a Microsoft issue? I have a vanilla install of Leopard with nothing funky going on and a fresh install of Office 2008. Didn't put 2004 back on after the Leopard upgrade as i thought i'd just wait for 2008. I synchronize NOTHING else. I'm up to 5 copies of each contact - can't wait to see where it stops.

It IS Microsoft's fault. 100%. If they can't get things working properly due ot a modified implementation of sync services, then it's still their fault, as they should have thoroughly tested.

 

[John C. Welch]

How can you say the sync issue is not a Microsoft issue? I have a vanilla
install of Leopard with nothing funky going on and a fresh install of Office
2008. Didn't put 2004 back on after the Leopard upgrade as i thought i'd just
wait for 2008. I synchronize NOTHING else. I'm up to 5 copies of each contact
- can't wait to see where it stops.

It IS Microsoft's fault. 100%. If they can't get things working properly due
ot a modified implementation of sync services, then it's still their fault, as
they should have thoroughly tested.

Actually, there are quite a few known issues with sync services on Apple¹s
end. The biggest one is multiday events and tasks. Those still suck, and
it¹s an apple bug. The Truth database can go bad, which causes no end to
problems. Again, that database is Apple¹s issue.

It¹s popular to blame Microsoft for everything, but with Sync Services,
Apple has the lion¹s share of the blame.