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I am happy about a solution I just came up with to the problem of not being able to define an arbitrary set of dates as the recurrence pattern for an event in Microsoft Entourage 2008.

I wanted to enter an event that was split across two days, and wouldn’t have obviously fit any type of “every Wednesday” or “every second Thursday” pattern. The ideal way to handle this, I think, was available in the Steltor CorporateTime calendar I used to use: create an event and add arbitrary dates to it, so that each recurrence appeared as part of the series. You can’t do that in Entourage — or I’ve never found any trickery to allow it.

Luckily, however, the event’s start time and duration was the same on each of the two days, so I realized I didn’t need to make two different events for it. And, I only had two recurrences to deal with — if there’d been more, it’s unlikely they would have been evenly spaced.

I used my “Compare dates” AppleScript to determine how many days apart the two instances of this particular event were. I came up with 20. I entered that as the number of days between recurrences. I set the recurrence to end on the date after the last event.

The result? I got two events (and two events only), both on the days I intended, and they were linked as part of a recurrence pattern. Sweet. It’s the little victories, you know?

A while back, Microsoft announced their Silverlight software. I didn’t think much of it, but now that they have announced the Azure platform, I realized that they have developed a Forgotten Realms theme in their products.

Let’s look at this, while we’re in the beginning of the trend, to see how this relates to the the SSI “gold box” Forgotten Realms games:

Based on this flimsy evidence, I suspect the next major product platform from Microsoft to be related, somehow, to “radiance.” (As in Pool of Radiance, of course.)

We might also expect a future initiative centered around “darkness,” but I consider that less likely — or, it may already have happened, given the reverse chronology that seems to be at work. (See Pools of Darkness.)

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 to update Office 2008 for Macintosh on Tuesday, May 13. The update makes a significant number of changes — spread across Entourage, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — so if you are a system administrator, I would recommend examining the full description of Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (12.1.0) in its release notes.

The update is downloadable via Microsoft AutoUpdate (invoke that helper program with Help > Check for Updates in any of the Office applications, or look inside /Library/Application Support/Microsoft in the file system) as well as the Microsoft Office for Mac Web site.

I had a good example today of how mismatched UIDs between Exchange meeting updates and existing events can affect Microsoft Entourage’s processing of those incoming updates.

I used the same drag-and-drop-to-export methodology as in my previous article. The iCalendar .ics file for the existing event that I dropped out of my Entourage calendar contained these unique identifiers:

UID:CD0000008B9511D182D800C04FB1625D717DE62091129A469FCB6E9EDDBF2075
X-ENTOURAGE_UUID:D26822E7-E4B7-49BB-9284-B18A2D42B77F

The e-mail cancellation from the meeting organizer, when dropped into the Finder as a .eml file, had the following unique identifiers:

UID:A449CD26-8099-11DC-8144-000393C78A56
X-ENTOURAGE_UUID:A449CD26-0991-DC81-4000-93C78A560000

As we can see, even though these were supposedly for the same event, neither the UID nor the X-ENTOURAGE_UUID properties matched. I emphasize the UID property because, as per my post on matching UIDs between Exchange meeting updates and existing events in Microsoft Entourage, I believe it to be the most important.

Both I and the meeting organizer are Entourage users in this case. That may be why both the event and the cancellation had X-ENTOURAGE_UUID properties at all. The UID property has appeared consistently for me in both events and their updates, no matter what their source.

Because of the discrepancy between unique identifiers, Entourage apparently couldn’t determine whether the cancellation was for the event that existed in my calendar. When Entourage “processed” the cancellation, it removed nothing from my calendar.

This seems entirely reasonable, although I would personally like Entourage to do deeper matching if it could: how about “is there an existing event by the same organizer and/or with the same name at the time of the update or cancellation?” Matching UIDs has got to be simpler.

How does this happen? Well, for me, it could have happened any number of ways: There could have been a past error when:

• Entourage was trying to synchronize to my Exchange account
• my Entourage calendar was synchronizing with Sync Services on Tiger or Leopard
• Missing Sync for Palm OS, which I use with my Palm Treo 650, was performing its synchronization with Sync Services on Tiger or Leopard
• I was using Microsoft Outlook in cached mode with my Exchange account
• I used Duplicate Killer for Outlook from 4Team to remove massive numbers of duplicate calendar entries from my Outlook/Exchange calendar (which could have resulted in the loss of events with their original UIDs).

As far as I can determine, when you have data synchronization problems, you’re going to have one of the following outcomes:

• data is added
• data is deleted
• data is modified
• nothing happens.

Not all of these are pleasant, mind you — and that can depend on the circumstances involved. Deleting data is perfectly acceptable in some scenarios where it needed to be removed, but not others where it means it has just been lost. Adding data is great, unless it results in unwanted duplicates.

Anyway, I hope this helps you understand how Microsoft Entourage works a bit better.

Amir’s post about how How Does Entourage Work? is certainly welcome. It outlines, service by service, how Entourage communicates with an Exchange server. It documents the basic traffic, ports used and protocol security.

This sort of thing really should have been part of the documentation for Microsoft Entourage 2004 — at least SP2 in September 2005 — but no matter the timing, it’s extremely useful information now. It explains to both tech support staff and Exchange administrators how Entourage conducts Exchange transactions. It also clears up misconceptions that I’ve come across on the Web, in forums, and in person.

In reviewing Jesper’s list of requirements for The Email Client That Doesn’t Suck, I was somewhat surprised how many of his points are already handled by Microsoft Entourage 2004.

I’d give it 19 out of 26 points. There are some places where I’m being charitable towards Entourage, partly because it can support the requirement with a little work (which does not always mean scripting — and it should be noted that Entourage is very scriptable) or I didn’t understand what Jesper meant by the requirement.

Many Mac users discount Entourage. There are a couple of reasons that may be cited:

• Microsoft bundles it with Office 2004, so you have to buy it along with a lot of other software in order to get it. That costs more than a standalone client, even if you’re eligible for the $149 Student and Teacher Edition (which is often discounted even more).
• It’s not Universal yet, so it works natively only on PowerPC Macs. It requires Rosetta on Intel Macs today. (But Microsoft has announced that the next version of Office will be Universal.)
• It comes from Microsoft, so it must be evil somehow.
• It has a custom monolithic database for its backend. This predates any of Apple’s Core Data-type development. It can be a completely valid issue for some — such as those with network or portable home directories, or those performing regular client backups.
• It doesn’t look like a Mac OS X application. Rather, you might say it looks more like an application from classic Mac OS … and I’d agree, but there are some quick things you can do to spruce things up. (I had some on my old blog, but I still haven’t ported the old content over. Suffice it to say that changing a lot of the font choices to “Lucida Grande” in the preferences makes a big difference.)

That said, there are many valid concerns about Entourage. I voice many through the Microsoft feedback channels available to me.

However, I think there is a huge impediment to creating a new e-mail client today, simply because of how connected this kind of product is to your whole computing experience. Any developer should take that into consideration, and realize that it’s probably an unending effort.

Teare: How to Steal Passwords from Safari's AutoFill … somewhat similar to the recently-announced cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

[Via the SecurityFocus Focus-Apple mailing list.]

It looks as if Microsoft has been watching my Google searches for a “bluetooth laser mouse” the past few months—and noting that no purchase had followed.

How else can I explain the perfection, from the mere specifications, of the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000? It appears to be so close to my buying criteria that they may very well have crawled inside my head to develop its feature set.

Aluminum, though? Seems like it will be one cold mouse in winter. Still, the expectation that its aluminum shell should be more durable than my older Wireless IntellMouse Explorer for Bluetooth (say that ten times, fast!) is a great bonus.

Actually, all that needs to be more durable are the buttons (so that they don’t lock into the “on” position after toting it around with a laptop for a year, grumble grumble) and the battery compartment. But with a rechargeable battery, that last point is probably moot. Update: Having seen a floor model of this mouse in person at the local CompUSA, I can confirm that the battery compartment is about as flimsy as my previous Microsoft Bluetooth mouse, but you’ll need to open it less because the battery can be charged in the mouse, and there is a power button. (I used to turn off my older mouse by removing a battery.)

Somewhere, I saw that the new mouse has an “off” button. That would be an excellent addition—nay, a necessary one, and potentially a deal stopper that must be weighed against the rechargeability and the quoted battery life. You’d recognize that if you’ve consulted my Epinions review of that first Microsoft Bluetooth mouse. Update: Having seen a floor model of this mouse in person at the local CompUSA, I can confirm that it has a sliding on/off power button on the bottom.

The earliest review on it states that, like previous Microsoft Bluetooth mice, the special software features are only enabled by using the Microsoft Bluetooth adapter—at least on Windows. So, caveat emptor. Even though the device is debuting with a Vista-ready Bluetooth keyboard (see the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 bundle), I’d be using the mouse on Mac OS X Tiger today.

Sigh. I resent paying $80-$90 for a mouse, though.

Get your Office editions here! The 2007 Microsoft Office System Packaging page contains a table that shows you what you get and don’t get in each of the eight editions of the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows. And I thought two versions, normal and professional, was a lot to handle!

The 2007 Microsoft Office Suites Comparison has some details about a few specific features but only compares them across three editions. (They note that “Office Standard 2007 information applies to Microsoft Office Basic 2007, Office Home and Student 2007, Office Standard 2007, Office Small Business 2007, and Office Professional 2007,” which accounts for the others.)