[RickR]

I just bought a iMac and am not sure if I should use Microsoft's Entourage or Apple's Mail App? I'm a recent switcher from PC's so am using to Outlook and I know Entourage is different. I like using features such as signatures and am not sure if Apple's Mail app will do everything I need since I use the computer for Office.
From what I've heard there is a plugin that allows you to switch contacts between Entourage and Address Book and a program that lets you switch your tasks and calendar from Entourage to iCal and of course vice versa. Is that true?
I'm not sure from what I've read if that is true for Mail. Is it? I have a lot of emails I save and would rather start with the right program from the beginning instead of changing a month down the line and most of all I'd like to know even if I try one I have the ability to switch my data over if I decide to change programs.

[tomrock]

It's tricky moving mail between Outlook and any Mac mail program. The easiest way is to use an IMAP account. Many web hosts will let you access your mail with IMAP.

There are programs that will help but I don't know of a good one myself. Maybe someone else will chime in.

[Kanga]

e2sync

Entourage Envoy
If you use OS X's Address Book to store your contact information, you can take advantage of Apple's iSync to synchronize your contacts with your iPod, PDA, and many mobile phones. In addition, many applications and utilities work with Address Book (including OS X's iChat AV and built-in fax functionality). If you don't use Address Book, you've probably felt left out in the cold. You can manually export and import information to and from other contact managers, but that can be rather frustrating -- especially if you frequently update your contacts.

If your contact manager happens to be Microsoft Entourage (X or 2004), you're in luck -- thanks to Paul Berkowitz's $19 Sync Entourage-Address Book 2.5.1 (; http://scriptbuilders.net). Based on the impressive AppleScript support built into both Entourage and Address Book, Sync Entourage-Address Book is a comprehensive set of scripts that lets you synchronize your contact data between the two -- so you can use your Entourage contact data with all the applications and services that support OS X's Address Book.

The first time you use Sync Entourage-Address Book, you run a special script that lets you tell the synchronization app how your computer is set up -- your Address Book display settings, what language you use for OS X, and so on. You can also choose how Entourage's Custom Fields correspond to Address Book fields, and choose between one-way and two-way syncing. (Since I never touch Address Book -- I always edit my contacts from within Entourage -- I use the one-way sync option.) Then you simply run the main application.

There are a few more options, and many other features to help you make sure your syncing is both accurate and complete. I highly recommend reading the (very thorough) documentation before using Sync Entourage-Address Book. You'll probably have to read through it only once. After the initial sync, you just run the app as often as you want to sync your contact information between Entourage and Address Book. (For more on scripts that work with Entourage, see "Get More from Entourage," Working Mac, November 2003.)

Note that Berkowitz also provides a similar, $19 utility, Sync Entourage-iCal, which synchronizes Entourage's calendar data with Apple's iCal.

[Nivag]

Within both Entourage and Apple Mail you can import email from each other. It's under the File menu in both Apps. i've done it both ways and it works fine when i've used it.

If you're looking for a way to move from Outlook to your Mac and you don't have an IMAP account, try O2M from here Little Machines - best $10's i've every spent. Yes there are free ways of doing this, but this saves a lot of time and hassle!!

[peeb]

Unless you need access to an exchange server I would recommend mail over entourage.