Re: ENTOURAGE STOPPED SYNCING & DOING SIMPLE FINDS - PLEASE HELP

On Dec 11, 1:15 am, Subnorry <Subno...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Corentin & Diane:

I must say, I was completely backward on this one.  I hardly ever use this
newsgroup, so I don't know much about it.  However, I have always thought
that the MVPs are paid, and this is one of Microsoft's ways of providing
customer support to Mac Office users.  I thought this because I once (a long
time ago) tried to solve an Entourage problem through Microsoft's customer
support 1-800 number, and the tech knew absolutely nothing about
Macintoshes, made no effort to help me, and was rude.  I wound up getting
help from an IT friend.  Over time I heard many similar complaints about MS
customer support, and then someone told me that this newsgroup was run by a
bunch of Mac people who lost their jobs with Apple in the mid-90s when the
company was going down the tubes and all got hired by the MacBU to overhaul
its customer service!  Either I was the *** of a joke or it was a case of
the blind leading the blind.  Anyway, I only check into the group when I
have a major problem.  Up until now, Office 2008 has been an absolute
disaster, so it's a wonder that I've only utilized the group twice since
Office 2008 was released.  In both cases I was able to fix the problem on my
own (by re-installing Office & rebuilding my contacts the 1st time, luck
this last time).  Nevertheless, it's good to know there are some selfless
folks out there like you and Diane Ross who have the patience to put up with
folks like me just to help us have a better experience with Microsoft
products.

Cheers to you both!

Jay

On 12/10/08 2:03 PM, in article
1irqp41.13ebben1e23q2oN%korvent...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Corentin Cras-Méneur"

<korvent...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Subnorry <Subno...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Corentin:

        Hi Subnorry,

Wow, you're pretty serious about your rules, aren't you?  I posted the
second message in all caps because nobody responded to my first one.  That

Well the group is pretty busy these days. With the influx of new posts
from the Forum front-end on Mactopia, it made the matter worse (and
threading is broken).
With all that, we see more and more posts without any detail (like: It's
broken! Fix it!).

You have to realize that this is a peer support group. We are all
regular users and no one gets paid to answer anything here. We all come
when we have time and do our best not to leave posts unanswered.
Reposts are fairly annoying (especially if they are within a short
timeframe). All-caps are really frowned upon.
I don;t think I'm *that* bad with rules myself. In some of the other
groups, if you forget to say Hi, Please and Thank you, you immediately
get a reply from several users telling you it's rude and no one will
answer your post :->

has always been my experience with this group, nobody tries to help if they
don't already know the answer.

People posting through the forum UI tend to simply check back for their
answer and never participate much in the other threads.

But if I post again in all caps I can
usually get an MS MVP to lend me a hand.

Yeah :-> though I suspect some of us will skip the message *because* it
is in all caps and others like me might answer, but will tell you we
really don't like all-caps messages. I tend to make an effort in this
group, but in others where I spend a little less time, like the Word
group, every minute counts and I simply skip all-caps messages and
questions that have already beed answered 20,000 times.

After all, as I was saying, I don't *have* to answer anything.
Imagine yourself in the opposite situation for a moment. You are trying
to asnwer questions in a crowd full of people. Will you first answer the
nice, polite people who phrase their question with care or the ones from
people shouting at you because you didn't answer fast enough??

BTW, I said I was a Mac power user, not a newsgroup hound.  Not everyone
knows the extraordinary range of rules extant for these newsgroups.

Rule number 1: be ncie
Rule number 2: provide all the details you can think of
Rule number 3: see rule number 1 ;-)

Seriously, it's not carved in stone, but if no one makes an effort to be
nice in the group, long-time users and people trying to answer posts
like myself simply won't come back.

Posting back to say whether the solution worked is also really helpful
too actually.

Anyway, today I told Entourage to sync my events to iCal, which it did..

Great!

Because it worked, I thought maybe that sync kicked something loose in Sync
Services, so I tried to sync my Entourage contacts to Address Book and
voila!  So, I no longer have that problem.

Thanks anyway for your help!

Wonderful! I'm glad things came back to normal :-)

Corentin

I understand what Diane and Corentin are saying and no one needs
answer anything. Being polite of course does help. However, this is
not a moderated tech support forum and really there aren't rules. You
just might not get an answer. That's all. I wouldn't worry that you've
done anything wrong as you haven't.

Secondly, you're right Entourage 08 is a disaster unfortunately. I've
moved off it to the Apple apps as I really had no choice due to the
major sync issues especially when I upgraded my BlackBerry to OS4.5. I
talked to Microsoft yesterday about their update 12.1.5 and it doesn't
resolve this problem. There won't be a near term fix as they are
really stumped on this. I'm actually thinking of now migrating back to
Outlook as the Apple apps don't cut it for me. Plus, I have to use the
BlackBerry Desktop manager under windows for app loads, backups and
even to do the OS upgrade. It is current and robust. I'll just use the
Palm desktop for my Palm but it always worked reliably in Windows.
Finally, Intuit is making no progress on an updated version of Quicken
and although Quicken 2006 is fine for me under OSX it is lame compared
to Quickens 2009 product for Windows.

I utilize 4 other forums extensively for in depth answers: MacFixit,
Apple, Markspace and Brighthand. These are all moderated forums and
there are rules of conduct but and it only happened with me once in
Brighthand, I did something not correct and a moderator just advised
me but corrected what I had done in the background (moved and combined
a duplicate post in another forum) so although there are rules I've
never found there is an issue nor, except in this one case, had anyone
commented on anything I did as incorrect. I do get great feedback not
only to what I pose but to what I answer when I attempt to help so
really I know from both angles that there is assistance from both
myself and others. Try moderated forums.

Finally, I really think that once you've exhausted any forum, its best
to call the company's product tech support. If there is no answer, the
problem usually gets escalated or is closed as unresolved but you'll
find out that there is an issue that can't be resolved till its fixed
in Engineering. Always good to know.
.