[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by analogika 

"Mail activity" doesn't appear "from nowhere" - it shows up when you click the little square/triangle icon at the bottom (the same one that shows covers in iTunes).

I'm thinking a fresh install and using Migration Assistant to restore your stuff from the external drive might be a better idea. It sounds vaguely like your home folder permissions are majorly messed up...

This is one of the things that makes me think it's pretty screwed up.

I can see the triangle icon, but clicking it has no effect. Then the next time I launch mail...it does have an efect but it won't bring the pane back again.

Then the section "On my mac" appears in hte side bar and I can move folders to it, then it dissapears again.

All the things that people are saying, just click this, or move this from here to there, are either not showing up on my mac or come and go as they please. For example if you scroll up this thread and look at the screen shot of my mail sidebar you will clearly see that there is no section On my Mac, and yet after I took that, it appeared, and now it's gone again.

My mails themselves, yes, I can see how folder permissions may be borked but the actual application behaviour... that has to be a deeper problem, no?

[analogika]

I have no idea whether a preference file with incorrect permissions could cause symptoms like you're seeing.


Random stab in the dark:

Do you have extra RAM installed in your machine? I've seen defective RAM do the *weirdest* things.

Here's what I'd do:

1. Run the Hardware Test from the Install Disk 1 that came with your Mac to check for bad memory, even if you're only running factory-installed RAM.

2. If that checks out okay, format and reinstall your system. MAKE SURE to let it verify the install disk - this takes ages, but IS IMPORTANT. A bad install disk WILL **** up your system.

3. Use the Migration Assistant during setup to transfer your data from the external backup. This will correct any weird permissions/group settings that may be ****ing with your hand-imported e-mails and settings.

NB: If the RAM turns out to be bad, you'll still need to re-install your system, as bad RAM WILL result in a corrupted install.

[Andrew Stephens]

Yeah good advice. Thanks

I guess I'm going to have to suck it up and get back to basics. Hopefully a clean install from base will get it all back on track.

TBH I'm also finding other apps a bit flakey, including Firefox

Good job it's the weekend!

[besson3c]

Andrew: not to sound like a dick, but it is much more difficult to help you when you don't try the advice we have provided. Have you tried setting up your Mail in another OS X account?

[Andrew Stephens]

Well I've traced a lot of the problems to one thing! The rss feed! If you have active rss feeds then the on my mac section shows up. If you place folders in here and then delete all the rss feeds (which I had done) then the on my mac section vanishes (why?) and this confuses the whole app as it has to move the folders and it then rtries to recreate folders that it thinks should still be there.

I have left one active rss feed in the side bar and the whole thing has been much more stable.


btw - any ideas how to set a schedule to empty trash and junk folders say once a day?

[Kenneth]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Mail whips Entourage senseless, except for Exchange compatibility.

I used to have Entourage on my work Mac. Not anymore! Setting up Exchange on Mail 3.0 took me a couple more minutes than I expected, but I was impressed after all. I really like the searching on Mail.app and support for iCal.

[Gankdawg]

Old Mail - when it sent pics from iPhoto, it also sent along extra .txt files (to Windows users).

New Mail - sends pics from iPhoto embedded in the message.

How do I send a picture from iPhoto to Mail and have it so I can save the attachments in Windows?

[pheonixash]

Originally Posted by Gankdawg 

Old Mail - when it sent pics from iPhoto, it also sent along extra .txt files (to Windows users).

New Mail - sends pics from iPhoto embedded in the message.

How do I send a picture from iPhoto to Mail and have it so I can save the attachments in Windows?

After you attach the pictures, right-click them and chose, "View as icon" It then sends all pictures as attachments instead of embedded in the e-mail.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by David Anders 

I answer questions about email, often.
I run Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird, and AOL
You can run both and move to whichever fits your needs...

Best advice ever!

"Use whatever you like and give me a call - I can help you in any case!"

[Gankdawg]

Originally Posted by pheonixash 

After you attach the pictures, right-click them and chose, "View as icon" It then sends all pictures as attachments instead of embedded in the e-mail.

Didn't work. It did shrink the pictures in Mail down to icons but when I got them at work using Outlook, the pictures just showed up as 2 really small, stretched photos.

[craigthomas]

I've switched from Entourage 2004/2008 to Mail 3.0 recently. Reasons?
-Time Machine bloats hard disk space upon backup of the ever growing Entourage database
-Concern that the Entourage Database will become corrupt, leaving me up sh*t creek w/out a paddle
-I have a new iPhone which works best with Address Book / Mail / iCal

My main issue is with Mail and fonts. Entourage seems to play nicely with my clients Windows email. But with Mail I notice that my emails sent with the standard Arial turn to Times on the replied emails. Why is this and would love help with a way to solve this? I have Mail set to use Arial as default.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Madrag]

I have tried thunderbird and mail as a replacement for entourage, but there are certain things that entourage is just better:
(I don't know a lot about apple's mail, many of this items may be wrong and I thank you for any correction; BTW, I'm comparing what I know of mail 2 and entourage 2004).

01. applescript
You can set up some applescript with shortcuts! (in safari you may use applescript, but you need to go to the script menu and it has no comparison to a shortcut).

02. accept Outlook invitations (also adds to the calendar and notifies you).
Does safari do this?

03. attachements
in entourage, you can drag and drop the attachements to its pane, or if desired, place them on the body of the email. In Safari it doesn't seem to store the attachements in its own pane, and rather places them on the body of the email?
BTW, because of this, it doesn't seem possible to delete an attachement from a received message in mail?

04. individual list view sorting
does safari do this?

05. email notification
I really hate those 1, 2, 3... over mail's icon, telling me that I have x unread emails...
Is there an option to change this?
Also, entourage has a preview (similar to growl's notifications), very handy!
Does safari have this? or do we need growl?

06. sort display
entourage's sort display is just perfect (sort by subject, and it uses a tab/block with the subject and all the related posts; etc).


Some others that I can't remember...

I would like to stress that I'm not a die hard fan of Entourage, and to be honest, I rather go for a free alternative than paying for office.

[starman]

I've been using Entourage since The Day It Was First Released on more than one Mac. Not only has it been rock solid and stable (except for a very, VERY few limited number of conditions), the database has NOT ONCE been corrupted. It's survived power outages, restarts, lockups, you name it. I've had Entourage running for days and weeks at a time without a restart and never once had a problem.

So, this anecdotal crap about how "it sucks" is just that, anecdotal. Which, I suppose, my story could be, but if Entourage sucked as much as goMac and besson would have you believe, nobody would buy it.

And yes, Spotlight works on the Entourage database.

That said, I'm not sure I want to PAY to upgrade to Office 2008. I bought Office v.X and Office 2004 and loved Entourage the whole time. However, I'm not paying several hundred dollars for an upgrade to a single app. I don't use Word/Excel/Powerpoint enough to upgrade because I'd really just be upgrading Entourage.

This thread has enlightened me to at least try Mail 3.0.

[Madrag]

^ I should have mentioned that as well! (Entourage db never got corrupted and it has also survived power outages, crashes, you name it, and I'm using the same db for the last 6 years!).

I too would like to try mail 3.

[Trygve]

Does Mail let you run a script on a message after it has already been received (ie not as part of the Rules process)? I use Entourage as I need this scriptability per-message. Basically I need to be able to select a message and thn run a script to parse some info from the email and store it in a FileMaker database. I can do this with Entourage... will Mail let me do the same?

[Sherman Homan]

I am glad you have had such good luck with Entourage, starman. My experience is not anecdotal, I have run into many corrupted Entourage databases. But as with all computer behavior, your mileage may vary! One point is accurate, as far as backups are concerned, if you have a 4 gig Entourage database, then one single silly 4k email joke will modify it. Then your backup program dutifully copies the entire database.

[craigthomas]

2004 Entourage db was rock solid for me too. Been using it since the 1st the day it came out, and it's be a great program for me. I also started with Claris Em@iler. Claris was a client of mine back then (I designed the Em@iler Packaging).

I have had an issue with 2008 when i tried to have Address Book sync with Entourage 2008. After a sync Entourage would not open and could not rebuild the database. I was able to use Time Machine from about 4 days earlier to get it back. Luckily i had the messages held on the server during those days.

Now I'm using Mail 3, Address Book and iCal. There are some things I miss with Entourage, but overall I'm happy with the move. iPhone integration is a major pull which is not offered with Entourage (too bad).

If you are planning on making the jump to Mail/Address Book/iCal from Entourage, there are many programs that will take the categories you've built into Address Book. Not from 2008 though.

[starman]

craig, what things do you miss from Entourage?

[Naplander]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Very simple:

Create your signature in the Mail settings.
(To add an image to the signature, do the obvious: Just drag and drop it into the signature.)

Your signature is now saved under "All signatures".

Drag and drop the new signature to all accounts on the left-hand side you want it to be available for.

When you create a new mail using one of the accounts you dragged the sig file to, the sig will be available and show up with any included inline graphics.

This doesn't work for me - it always arrives at the recipient as an attachment. Do you know anyway around this??

[craigthomas]

Originally Posted by starman 

craig, what things do you miss from Entourage?

What I miss that Entourage has:

I like the links that Entourage has tying the mails with the people in the address book. In the Entourage Address Book, on the individual address, it tells you the last email you received from that person and the last one you sent to that person. You can click on it and it brings you to the email.

You can also see links to replies and original messages from replies within single emails. It flags emails as "you Replied to this email", or "this is a reply from your Original message" and lets you click to find that email.

The list views of the all the categories in Entourage Address Book are superior. For example, you can see all the contacts in the list and see their categories/email addresses/phone, etc (you can add/subtract what you want to see).

I like the coloring of text in Entourage.

I like the way the Mail box folders get bold when an email comes in in Entourage.

While in another app, when an email comes in from Entourage, you get a little popup that you can click on which takes you directly to that email.

Fonts are a problem with Mail, and works perfect with Entourage. I found a fix by setting the font on every email I send, but it's a hassle. Hoping Apple will fix this.

Auto capitalization is something I miss with Mail. Yes I'm lazy.

I don't understand why iPhone has better Mail than Mail in Leopard.

I'm sure there's more, but my Entourage database is now 9GB. I really love Time Machine but I've gone through 500GB way too fast using Entourage's db, and that's not working for me. And the iPhone integration is a must. Unfortunately Entourage 2008 didn't do anything with a tighter integration with Address Book, iSync and iPhone. That was dumb, and the straw that broke the camel's back. Mail, Address Book and iCal are clean apps and I can run my business on them fine.

[starman]

The notification when you get mail is wicked cool. I found a plugin to do that called Mail.appetizer. I'll try it later.

I really can't comment on anything you listed above except to say that I have seen most of the good things from Entourage you mentioned.

This all revolves around the fact that MS can't split off Entourage into its own $75 app. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if I could, but I'm not paying $250 for an upgrade when I only use 1/4 apps.

[besson3c]

The Growl beta and GrowlMail plug-in so far have been working just fine for me in Leopard's version of mail for providing notifications... Far more customization potential with Growl too, I bet.

[starman]

Ok, I spent three, yes THREE days cleaning out my Entourage inbox. 11 years of crap I just neglected. I went from like 18,000 emails across 8 accounts to 3,000 emails across 4 accounts.

Anyway, I rebuilt the Enourage database for good measure and imported everything into Mail. That went very smoothly.

I installed Widescreen so that the look of Mail was the same as Entourage.

Right off the bat I found something I'm going to miss from Entourage - grouping by date. I've really grown accustomed to that.

There's a "new mail" sound for Mail, but a checkbox for "play sounds for other mail actions". WTF? Why would I want to hear a "no mail" sound every 5 minutes? That's just stupid.

I can't see how to import rules from Ent. Bleh.

Moving back and forth between Ent. and Mail, I'm REALLY going to miss grouping by date.

In Ent., when you select a folder the app tells you how many emails are in that folder. Mail doesn't.

(I'll keep editing this post as I go)

[starman]

The more I play with Mail, the more I miss Ent. I may pony up the dough and just get it.

Anyone know the difference between the Home and Regular edition besides Exchange support?

[starman]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Mail whips Entourage senseless, except for Exchange compatibility.

Read what I wrote above. I don't think that's true at all.

[starman]

Hmmm....

Regarding "massive db vs. individual files", isn't it better to have a massive db, or at least several large dbs so that the small emails aren't forced to take up 4k for each message?

[besson3c]

Starman: no. If space savings is a consideration, a compression algorithm such as gzip would be your best bet. It offers huge savings on text files.

Speaking from a technical design standpoint, Entourage is a POS. It may have some features that you like, but its low level handling of mail is ass. The "lets throw binary globs into a database" approach is retarded, and this applies to Exchange too. This is not what databases are for, you are buying anything by throwing everything into a database just because. Databases are optimized for text based searches based on a primary key. File systems are for storing attachments, not databases.

It wasn't until Entourage 04 that Entourage supported TLS, which is also quite telling.

Messages as individual files have advantages. Cyrus server and Courier IMAP does this for a reason (with Cyrus' DB + individual approach, and Courier IMAPs Maildir approach). Apple gets it, Microsoft does not.

[starman]

I can accept that part of it. However, there are a lot of really nice features of Ent. that I'm missing right off the bat when using Mail and I'm not sure it's a good tradeoff going to Mail.

[besson3c]

I don't really like Apple's Mail plug-in scheme, but you might want to look to see if there is a group-by-date thing there - there are dozens of Mail plugins out there. Otherwise, play around with the threaded view sorted by date.

If you really want all of the bells and whistles and a back end that doesn't suck, you might be best off looking at Thunderbird. It is far more powerful a client than both Entourage and Mail. I'd use it myself if it had the universal Inbox thing, notes/to-dos that work with Darwin Calendar Server, and a better way of handling attachments. Still, I give up on losing out on folder subscriptions, multiple identities, and performance, and reliability which TB has over Mail. OS X Mail is *very* slow, not to mention buggy. I might switch back to TB at some point...

[craigthomas]

No difference between Entourage Home and Regular.

Originally Posted by starman 

The more I play with Mail, the more I miss Ent. I may pony up the dough and just get it.

Anyone know the difference between the Home and Regular edition besides Exchange support?

[starman]

Ok, I'm off to pick up Office Home edition at Best Buy. Mail.app is a serious step backwards and I can't find myself using it after using something with a ton of features like Entourage.

[starman]

Ok, up and running with Office 2008. I'm only running Ent. at the moment. So far, so good except the known sound bug. The space used by the sort-by-date area is a little larger than I'd like. Other than that, it's fine. I don't have time to really dive into it now.

[paredi67]

Can someone tell me how I can restore all the MAIL rules I ad created in my Tiger mail? I have imported all mailboxes allright but I haven't been able to do anything with the rules (I even put them in the preferences and renamed them in the same way as the original!)

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by paredi67 

Can someone tell me how I can restore all the MAIL rules I ad created in my Tiger mail? I have imported all mailboxes allright but I haven't been able to do anything with the rules (I even put them in the preferences and renamed them in the same way as the original!)

I copied your post to its own thread here.

[Bearsfan34]

Originally Posted by Kenneth 

I used to have Entourage on my work Mac. Not anymore! Setting up Exchange on Mail 3.0 took me a couple more minutes than I expected, but I was impressed after all. I really like the searching on Mail.app and support for iCal.

If you have access to it, log in to your OWA account & see if any of the messages you've deleted or moved to Exchange folders via Mail on your local machine are truly moved/deleted to the server-stored folders, or if every email is still there in the OWA inbox.

I too thought Mail was working "great" with Exchange when I installed Leopard, only to find that Mail simply will NOT sync with Exchange, and Mail treats my Exchange account like IMAP, only worse. It simply will not sync email moved to folders or deleted email with Exchange. I've been all over the web trying to find answers...so it's either Mail is still deficient or there's something missing on the Exchange server.

IMAP is turned on, and Entourage 2008 works as advertised with Exchange. I want Mail to work so badly with Exchange but it simply won't.

[forumhound]

love entourage and project center 2008...very cool mail app.

[turtle777]

I switched from Entourage to APple Mail back in 2004.

I'm pretty happy with Mail for the most part, the occasional hang-ups with forced quite aside.

What am I missing that Entourage has that I would absolutely need ?

-t

[infowarrior]

The one thing I like is having mail, pim, and calendar in one app window. I don't need to have Mail,iCal,Addressbook up and open, or switch between them. With Entourage it's all self-contained and I can windowshade the app if I need to hide it for a bit.

Plus it's a breeze to sync the EntourageDB from my iMac to my PB and back again when travelling....all my contacts, mail, and calendars are in one single file.

Sure the 1-file thing bothers me, but imho it's a tradeoff that I can live with.

Still running Entourage04, and am debating whether/when to take the plunge and install 2008.

[besson3c]

Both Entourage and Mail are seriously flawed.

Entourage's low level design is retarded, as I've stated a few times and will leave at that for risk of sounding repetitive. Mail's performance and resource consumption is absolutely pathetic, as is its lack of support for semi-advanced IMAP features.

I wish I could just take Thunderbird (which is superior to both Mail and Entourage in both of these regards), slap the OS X Mail interface on it and some Mail GUI features such as to do/notes.

I'm almost willing to give up to do/notes though because they are nearly worthless in Mail as it stands now, since it takes 0923423 years to display them.

[turtle777]

Anyone ever worked with Outspring Mail ?

http://www.outspring.com/index.php?o...ask=view&id=64

Looks like an interesting mail client. Incorporates a lot of GTD functions and features I have come to love from the ClearContext plugins for Windows Outlook.

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Anyone ever worked with Outspring Mail ?

Outspring Inc - Outspring Mail

Looks like an interesting mail client. Incorporates a lot of GTD functions and features I have come to love from the ClearContext plugins for Windows Outlook.

-t

You are going to have to come up with an incredibly compelling case to get me to pay $60 (as in intro price) for an email client.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

You are going to have to come up with an incredibly compelling case to get me to pay $60 (as in intro price) for an email client.

Auto-assign topics and auto-sort alone is worth it.
I have to process around 100 mails daiy. Auto-assigning topics and sorting them back to topic folders with one mouse click saves incredible amounts of time.

If I was using Mail at work, I'd get it in a heartbeat.

Clearcontext does a similar thing, and it boosted my email productivity manyfold.
It's also priced similar, although CC is just a Win Outlook plugin.

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Auto-assign topics and auto-sort alone is worth it.

If I was using Mail at work, I'd get it in a heartbeat. Clearcontext does a similar thing, and it boosted my email productivity manyfold.

It's also priced similar, although CC is just a Win Outlook plugin.

-t

Those are all nice features, but I don't feel inclined to go ga ga for all the bells and whistles when I have yet to find an IMAP client for OS X that works well at the basics in a way that is standards compliant (unlike either Entourage or OS X Mail) other than Thunderbird. I had to modify my IMAP server to accept 15 simultaneous IMAP connections from a single IP address to satisfy what OS X Mail (in Tiger) was trying to do, for instance.

This has made me cynical about OS X software, since it seems that many Mac users are more attracted to shiny and pretty software rather than stuff that actually performs its core functions well.

If this client doesn't constantly hog the CPU, lock up for nearly a minute randomly, doesn't use some goofy propietary formats, supports folder subscriptions, which folders to include in new mail checks, and multiple identities, let me know and I'll check it out.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Those are all nice features, but I don't feel inclined to go ga ga for all the bells and whistles when I have yet to find an IMAP client for OS X that works well at the basics in a way that is standards compliant (unlike either Entourage or OS X Mail) other than Thunderbird. I had to modify my IMAP server to accept 15 simultaneous IMAP connections from a single IP address to satisfy what OS X Mail (in Tiger) was trying to do, for instance.

This is EXACTLY why you should go for the bells and whistles.

Since you already established that there is no mail client that doesn't suck at the basics, you might as well go overboard with extras.

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

This is EXACTLY why you should go for the bells and whistles.

Since you already established that there is no mail client that doesn't suck at the basics, you might as well go overboard with extras.

-t

Thunderbird doesn't suck at the basics. I'm torn everyday between interface features (OS X Mail) vs. lack of suckiness (Thunderbird).

Maybe I ought to look at this thing, or wait until somebody else comes up with a report