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You hardly have an excuse to avoid buying Office 2004.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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Entourage, Part 2: Great calendar, outstanding text handling and much more


March 30, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   Apple's OS X e-mail program -- the one called simply "Mail" -- does a great job most of the time as a kind of always-on connection with the world. I especially like how fast it works and how easily it deals with attachments.
   But, as I explained last week, I realized not long ago that I had outgrown Mail and needed something more powerful. I found it in Entourage, the mail-and-scheduling software that's included in Microsoft's excellent Office 2004 suite.
   The three main "office" functions -- word processing, presentation and number crunching -- are handled very well by the Office trio of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Power Point and Microsoft Excel. Given the ease with which you can get a discount on Office 2004, you hardly have an excuse to avoid it. (Teachers or students -- including anyone who used to be a teacher or student, believe it or not -- can get a Student-Teacher version of Office 2004 for about $130.)
   But Office 2004 is much more than a three-legged stool. In some ways, the best part of Office 2004 is the mail-and-scheduler, Entourage. Switching from Mail to Entourage gave me five big advantages. You'd probably find them important, too.
   In order of usefulness, they are:
   AutoCorrect when writing messages, notes and texts within Entourage. AutoCorrect, as Microsoft Word power users probably already know, automatically turns your own shorthand into full words and phrases.
   In other words, you can tell the AutoCorrect function to turn "myname" into your full name and address whenever you type it. Other example: "recv" can be "receive," "orderform" can be a complete order form for your organization or company, and, if you really want to get fancy, "mynovel" can be the entire text of that great American novel you're writing.
   AutoCorrect is the closest thing to a word processing function made in heaven. Ordinarily, AutoCorrect works only when you're using Microsoft Word, but Entourage uses Word's underlying word processing engine for all text entry. You're treated to the best word processor available without needing to use it.
   Outstanding text handling. Got a message full of those blasted text-quoting marks? You can get rid of them instantly with a click. If the message still looks odd, you can clean up the text with another click. Need to "normalize" an e-mail or a note that's written in CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE THIS? Another quick click. (Select some text and use Ctrl-Click or right click for the text-conversion functions.)
   A great calendar. I like iCal, Apple's own calendar/scheduler, but the Entourage calendar is leagues ahead of it. And you can link e-mail, notes, reminders, tasks and even desktop files to calendar items. Notification can be done by a message, an e-mail letter, a chime or a tune, and you can press a "snooze" button if a notification message is getting in your way.
   Spam filtering that is MUCH better than it is in Apple Mail. It's smarter and doesn't need much training.
   Mail rules that can apply to both incoming and outgoing messages. Apple Mail's rules apply only to incoming messages. Entourage lets you reply automatically to messages you get with certain text strings in the subject line, for example, and it can even strip off all attachments from messages that have been sent -- a huge savings over a few months' time.
   There's much more. I'll tell you about other features later this spring.