OF and Outlook 2010 for Mac?
 

Outlook 2010 is due out soon and I think people are trialing beta versions.

My interest in it is to be able to use MS Exchange and to be able to set up out of office email responder messages.

Am I mad?

Will using Outlook 2010 be entering a world of pain?

I am all Mac based. (MBAir and iPhone)

Will it play ball nicely with OF?

Thanks OF comrades!

Outlook 2011 (the Mac version is a year after Windows) is supposed to be scriptable, so it should be able to send items to Omnifocus. Outlook contains a mile long list of functionality and much of it is useful to a lot of people BUT: If Exchange is your only reason for choosing it, I would consider a few things first.

1. Snow Leopard and hence Mail, Address Book and iCal works well with Exchange 2007. It works less well with 2003, but your email is no problem (imap setup).

2. For Out of Office, you can do that from Outlook Web Access if that is set up for the Exchange domain. If you have access, you can also do it with [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx"]remote desktop control[/URL]. In Exchange 2007 I think you can set up automatic intervals, like Mon-Fri 17-08:00 too, but your Exchange admin should know more about this.

3. If you work efficiently with what you have I see no reason to start looking into Outlook unless you have specific issues in your workflow that you would like to see improved. My personal conclusion is: MS Office is an industry standard, but 95% of its functionality is something that 95% of us do not really need, including most professionals. I still use Excel and Word (2008) but for practically all of my needs I could use Google's web tools, Open Office, etc instead. If you are to use MS Office professionally you should invest a lot of time in setting up your workflow around it to make the financial investment worthwhile. But why would you use it in the first place, if you use and like Omnifocus and it does what you need...?

[QUOTE=Arild;85017]2. For Out of Office, you can do that from Outlook Web Access if that is set up for the Exchange domain. If you have access, you can also do it with [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx"]remote desktop control[/URL]. In Exchange 2007 I think you can set up automatic intervals, like Mon-Fri 17-08:00 too, but your Exchange admin should know more about this.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks

Actually, I have no Exchange admin to consult with. I am a sole trader / one man operation.

I am a happy OF user - I just want to introduce to my all Mac application set up - a very comprehensive Out Of Office auto reply system.

I am being cheeky asking here - but as it was a forum area full of API's, scripts and the like I though I might stick my neck out.

Perhaps I can bounce all my email via Thunderbird's webmail? (all seems very confusing..!)

Or maybe I need my own 'always on' email server (running on a screenless mac mini?)

How about a simple rule that you turn on that responds to all your email with an I'm out of the office message? Not fancy enough? Create groups in your address book and then rules that send specific replies to those groups. You can go crazy with rules and groups and get as granular as you like.

I still don't know what this has to do with OF though.

It started as an Outlook 2010 Mac and OF thread.

I will continue the quest elsewhere - sorry moderators for OT posting.