New Mac convert has issues with transferingdata from Outlook 2007 to Entourage 2008

[gdw35]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: pop

Hi

I have been a dedicated PC user for (too) many years and recently (last month) made the switch to Mac. When I purchased my iMac I also purchased Office 2008. I assumed that since I used Office 2007 on my PC I could easily transfer everything over to the Mac environment and use Office 2008 for Mac. How wrong I was.

Whilst I do not have any issues with Word, Excel and Powerpoint (yet), the biggest issue I have is with Entourage. I have found no way to transfer all my Outlook 2007 data (ie. mail, contacts, tasks, notes, calendar) into Entourage 2008. I thought that these were both Microsoft products. In fact I am not even sure why Entourage is not called Outlook for Mac as it looks, behaves and has the same features as Outlook for PC.

A call to Microsoft technical support has left me even more aghast. I explained my problem to the "support guy" at the Indian call centre who put me on hold for 5 minutes and then came back to me with 3 option:
1. Pay $80 for a Microsoft technician to talk me through the process. I just bought the product, why should I pay more to be able to start using it?
2. Go to "one of the many tech support pages at Mactopia.com". In fact I actually laughed out loud when he said that he could not give me the page the explained how do fix my issue. He suggested I do a search for "Outlook 2007" and I "probably would be able to find something to help".
3. Take my new Mac to a technical expert (he suggested a store) and get them to do it.

After a brief heated discussion I was flat out told that even though I had just purchased the product, unless I paid someone at Microsoft to help me directly I would have to help myself.

So here I am, trying to help myself. Can any one offer advice on how I can get all my emails, tasks and notes (with all attributes, flags, reminders, etc.) from Outlook 2007 into Entourage 2008? I managed to transfer my contacts and calendar by first synching my phone with Outlook and then synching with Entourage.

As an aside, can any one explain to me why two Microsoft applications that do IDENTICAL tasks cannot exchange information? I would have thought that this would be a given. Anyone transfering between the PC world and the Mac world would need to do this.

TIA

Grant
(A grumpy new Entourage user)

 

[Diane Ross]

(A grumpy new Entourage user)

Welcome to the weird world of Microsoft!

Since you indicated you have a POP account, we'll have to look at the
options available. The easiest way to move over mail is via an Exchange or
IMAP account, but we can do POP it's just not as easy.

What form is your old data? PST, CSV, MBOX files???

I can point you to the links that explain who to move your mail.

Check out the options on the "Convert Mail from Windows to Mac" Page:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/cross_platform/win_mac.html>

Import PST Files

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/import_export/pst.html>

Import/Export CSV File

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/import_export/csv.html>

Cheers and Welcome to Mac! I have a few tips and links posted to help new
users here:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/index.html>

Post back and let us know if you need further help.

 

[George_HInkson]

<http://www.techhit.com/messagesave/>

This is the app that I used to convert our 3 member marketing dept from Outlook to Entourage.

Worked quite well.

 

[gdw35]

Just in case you were interested, I downloaded (and paid for) o2m from Little Machines. The app is a little amateurish and managed to crash/freeze my PC on one occasion, but I have managed to transfer pretty much all of my email, contacts and calendar items from Outlook 2007 on PC to Entourage 2008 on Mac.

For some reason a few emails failed to convert (lost about 15 - 20 out of several hundred emails) and some contacts were missing information.

Whilst not perfect o2m is a perfectly valid solution that is relatively easy to use but will require some manual "clean-up" after.