I have posted several rants to this list about my dissatisfaction with
various parts of the Entourage user interface. But I have stayed with
Entourage because some of the other features work very well: AppleScript
support, text cleanup options, mailing list management, etc.
The ugly icons and the rough edges in parts of the UI are annoying but
tolerable. Losing or misplacing data is not tolerable. There have been
several instances where I spent a long time carefully composing a complex
email to someone, saved it as a draft, and then saw it disappear from
Entourage when I tried to send it. The message was not mailed, and there
was no sign of it anywhere in the database. In each case, I had to
recompose the message from scratch, wasting hours of time. Perhaps I hit
the wrong key combination, causing them to be deleted accidentally. But
there were no confirmation alerts ("Are you sure you want to permanently
delete?"). This has happened several times to me over the last few years.
I've asked this list for an explanation, with no answers.
The other worrisome issue appeared relatively recently. In fact, it
happened again this morning. I ran a check for new mail. As the inbox for
my personal IMAP account was updating (with new headers flashing in the
message list) I noticed a couple of messages from an important business
associate. But when the update was complete, those message headers were
missing from the list. I ran another check for new mail, and they were
still missing. FYI, my inbox is sorted by "Received", with most recent at
the top. Eventually, I was able to make the headers appear, by bringing up
the Entourage Find dialog (cmd-option-F) and searching for the sender's
name. That caused the inbox message list to update and show the headers.
When I got to work, I had a similar experience on the Mac in my office,
which runs the same versions of Mac OS X (10.6.4) and Entourage (12.2.6).
After the new mail check, the messages from my associate were not displayed.
I looked at the web mail page for my email provider (FastMail.fm), and the
messages were displayed there. They were also displayed by the Mail app on
my iPhone 4. They eventually appeared on my office installation of
Entourage, but only after I ran through all my message lists, flipping the
various headers and sort controls, and running more mail checks. I don't
know what I did to cause the missing messages to appear.
These are pretty serious issues. If Entourage cannot reliably detect an
important incoming message, or if it loses drafts before I can send them,
then I need a different email client.
I am probably one of the most loyal users of Entourage. I have been with it
since the original incarnation as Claris Emailer 1.0. I will be installing
Office 2011, because it is site-licensed by my employer and necessary for my
work. But I will switch to Apple Mail if I continue to see the problems
described above, or if the long-promised update for iPhone calendar sync
does not work well.
--
Julian Vrieslander <[email protected]>
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