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On My Computer in Entourage and Outlook 2011 for Mac

Monday, February 28th, 2011

“On My Computer” is one of the searches that has brought people to my site. I mention it in my post on Outlook 2011 but not what it is. Here’s a quick explanation of what it is and why some people will find it in Outlook 2011.

Entourage and Outlook are both products that fall into the category of â€œPIMsâ€, or â€œPersonal Information Managersâ€. They have Mail, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, and Contacts all wrapped in one product. Generally the different sections work with each other to help users manage most aspects of work and/or home life.

Why mention Entourage in an article about Outlook?

Entourage was the Macintosh email/calendar app in MS Office before Outlook 2011 came out. Some of the confusion people are experiencing is because a few of the software “quirks” are really Entourage features that were brought over into the replacement application. “On My Computer” is an odd concept for anyone who is not used to Entourage.

What is “On My Computer”?

Mail is brought into the application from another server using a few different methods; POP, IMAP, or Exchange. Your setup determines which method you use – which controls how some parts of the software look to you.

In one type of Exchange setup users will see a server copy of their Mail and a blank area called â€œOn My Computerâ€ which provides a place to archive mail messages locally on the hard drive. People can move mail from the server to the local drive easily.

There is generally a server version of the Calendar as well as a local calendar. The idea is that you can have a private local calendar (that can only be seen from that machine) and a server calendar that can hold meetings and other work-related items. However, many people keep all calendar items on the server so they can be seen from OWA (Outlook Web Access – the browser version) or their iPhone/Blackberry.

The Notes, Tasks, and personal Email Groups are usually local only but Contacts, Calendar, and Mail can generally be stored either locally or on the server.

To make things even more complicated â€“ itâ€™s sometimes possible to have items that are usually local only, like Notes that sync to a server. In a company, the organization that installs and implements the software will have many rules they have to follow for data management so, even though the software is the same, the behavior of the software can be different company to company (which for a software trainer is not a lot of fun to figure out, believe me).

So what is the practical result?

People using Entourage often have to remember to keep the “On My Computer” part closed and just ignore it most of the time.

For Outlook 2011 it depends on if the user is using POP, IMAP, or Exchange mail as to what they see. For users that do see it, but are not using it to store anything, “On My Computer” can be turned off in Preferences -> General.

If it can be hidden, why turn it on?

Because most of the time you can’t make private email groups (distribution lists) without it. It’s also a fast way of pulling mail off the server to archive on your local machine (you are backing up your computer regularly, right?) There is no way of hiding it from some screens and displaying it in others.

My head hurts. What should I do if I have the software?

Ok – here’s the simplest version I can think of.

If you’re on Entourage and you see a server version of your mail and calendar and an “On My Computer” version – keep it closed in those screens unless you wan use it for local storage. You likely will only have an “On My Computer” option for notes, tasks, and private contacts though.
If you’re on Outlook 2011 (not 2010, just the mac version) keep “On My Computer” turned off unless you need personal email groups or to have a local-only version of mail.
If you’re in Outlook 2011 and your Mail lands in “On My Computer” from the server keep it turned on to see all of your content.

I hope that helps new users avoid accidentally putting items locally that they want to be on the server. When it comes to Outlook 2011 please keep in mind that it is very new software (it had a October 2010 release date) and should evolve over time. The version that you see at home or at work may look quite different that what you see in pictures on the internet. There are a stunning number of ways to change the behavior of the software during installation – most, if not all of which you will have no control over in a work setting. So don’t be surprised if your version is different that others.

Tags: Entourage, Macintosh, Outlook
Posted in Macintosh, Software, Tips for Trainers, Training | 12 Comments »

My Mother moves to a Mac

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Everyone, meet my first guest blogger. You should call her “Carol”, I have to call her “Mom”.

I asked her to write up her experience moving from her really, really old pc laptop to a Mac Air. I thought her point of view might be useful for my readers.
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The first thing I had to learn was that changing from a PC to a Mac is called â€œmigratingâ€. Until I knew that, I couldnâ€™t find much on how to do it.

Using my new Mac Air is all about breaking deeply embedded habits.

I started with cards in the â€˜70â€™s, and formed my habits on a laptop that did not have a mouse (and no one had invented the keypad). So Iâ€™m used to keyboarding a lot.

I knew from the get-go that the Mac doesnâ€™t have a Delete key â€“ key that says delete is a backspace (mainly). So I knew Iâ€™d have to cope with that. It is down to being mildly annoying now, rather than causing hand waving frustration. (Now, after a month, the initial overload is past and itâ€™s now easier to learn yet another new thing. To delete, hit â€œfn deleteâ€. So I keep adding shortcuts: Dan Rodney has a list for that!)

It still seems strange that the Mac has the documents floating around, loose from the menus and tool bars. It seems as though they might wander off and get lost or something. (More on wandering later.)

Almost everything is called something different from what Iâ€™ve called it for decades. With programs on a PC, closing is quitting. In Mac, closing isnâ€™t quitting, but you donâ€™t have to close to quit, although quitting closes. Got it?

(And I learned that the tiny light on the shelf below the icon tells you if you havenâ€™t quit.)

And thatâ€™s just one example. So many things are called something else, or else they work differently, or theyâ€™re not in the same place.

The x for closing is on the upper left, not the upper right. The first few days there was a lot of going in the wrong direction. At least the buttons are in color, which makes them more visible and has cut down on that goof.

Early on I used a flash drive to bring a lot of documents over. It slots into the right hand side of the new machine, rather than the back of the PC. After transferring lots of key documents, I ejected the flash drive, and it was bent. Hadnâ€™t realized that it was resting on the arm of the chair and taking the weight of my typing. Bent it back. It seems to still work.

The Mac I got, the Air, doesnâ€™t have buttons for page-up, page-down, home, end or insert. Instead they have all these buttons that you have to use with other things to get things done. I learned that to recognize the Command squiggy. It may have a correct name, but that is what I call it. There are symbols for the fn and control and option buttons that you are supposed to know to understand the instructions for using them. I have them written down somewhere.

Changing over is complicated a bit by the fact that it isnâ€™t just changing to a Mac, but changing to different versions of software as well. For example, I was able to access a legal version, so Iâ€™ve now upgraded to Office 2004. It isnâ€™t quite the same as the old one I had. Neither is Firefox for Mac, or Eudora for Mac. You can tell that I donâ€™t like having to learn new software, because I went through quite a bit of finagling to stay with Eudora and keep my saved messages and address book. That story is too long to tellâ€¦

One of the first things I was did on the Mac was work on some research in Word. I accidentally hit a toolbar button that puts in symbols for every space and paragraph break, but didnâ€™t realize it and first, and by then Iâ€™d closed that toolbar, to recreate the set up I was used to. No amount of searching through menus and help worked to figure out what Iâ€™d done and how to undo it. Itâ€™s a good thing that my daughter teaches software.

When I printed out my work, I found that Iâ€™d increased the size of the font because this screen shows things up as so much smaller, apparently due to a finer grain. So the document was 10 pages of large print for the vision impaired, which Iâ€™m not yet. I still find it easier to work in a 16 point font in Word, even with it zoomed quite a bit.

Some things were quite easy, like learning to use Command-S to save instead of Alt-S. The Command button is bigger than the others, and it is in the right place to be an Alt.

I use Excel a lot, and had always hit F2 to edit in a cell. On the Mac, F2 brightens the screen, and it is BRIGHT. Happened often – every time I worked on my inventory, for several days. It was especially uncomfortable before I found the unbrighten key. I havenâ€™t learned the correct name for that one yet, but I know where it is now.

The lack of page-up, etc. made it really hard to get anywhere on a spreadsheet, for days. The two-finger scrolling works for some tasks, and Iâ€™ve named sections of my main spreadsheet, which is thousands of lines long, so I can go up or down fairly fast. It took me a while to figure out that F5 still is go-to, when the other function keys are all sorts of strange things.

Some short-cut keys that work in some Mac programs donâ€™t seem to work in Excel or Word. So selecting large groups of cells is sometimes still quite clunky. If I want to go to the end, Command-arrow does it, but if I just want a large selection, but not that large, itâ€™s still very slow. I still miss those page buttons.

For decades now, when I get done changing the contents of a cell, Iâ€™ve hit Enter. I have no problem using Command-C to copy or Command-X to cut now, but I keep hitting Enter to paste them, then have to go back and hit Command-V to make the Mac paste. Have done that one dozens and dozens of times, and itâ€™s not going away. Since Enter works to finalize editing of a label or formula, it isnâ€™t a habit I can stop entirely, which makes it much tougher.

I amazed my Mac-using daughter by overloading the memory and crashing Excel, thus meeting the color wheely of death. Well, just death of Excel, which reconstituted what Iâ€™d done, so I didnâ€™t really lose anything. Too much cutting and pasting and copying and moving things around without saving often enough, and wheeeeeâ€¦. It was a lot of moving things around.

And then there is the wandering around problem. It seems that I have a still have a habit of resting my left hand on the computer when using the keypad. And since the Airâ€™s keypad is large, Iâ€™m often touching it without realizing it. As a result, when I go to move the cursor, the entire page starts sliding around. Or else it changes size. Dizzying.

I now know to push to the left when scrolling with 2 fingers, or I end up in very strange places, especially on a spreadsheet.

Then there are the floating menus that the gremlins send. Somehow, I touch the keypad and a floating menu appears. This happens when Iâ€™m sure I havenâ€™t done anything. Must be gremlins. Touching the keypad does all sorts of strange things â€“ moving the cursor, selecting text, and other odd things that I havenâ€™t figured out yet. This is most startling when I donâ€™t realize that Iâ€™m touching it.

Sometimes the floating menus are useful, so I set the keypad to have the right hand corner be a right click (which Mac calls something else) in the System Preferences. Setting it was easy because it seemed a lot like the Control Panel in the old PC. Some other things were quite easy, like setting up the wireless access to the internet. All I needed was the code, which I had carefully saved. Then I had it look for the printer â€“ I forget how â€“ and that was working.

Despite all this complaining, I really like the new machine. The old PC would hang up frequently, and I had to reboot it once or twice a day at least. The Air comes up from hibernation so fast, and it is light to hold for hours of work. And it is just pretty.

Iâ€™d been learning Photoshop Elements to do a project with lots of images of historical embroideries when I decided to break down and get the new â€˜puter. Iâ€™m functional on spreadsheets and documents, and have spent many hours on each. The browser has gotten lots and lots of use, as has the email. However, Iâ€™m going back to the PC to finish printing the photos, and leave learning iPhoto for a couple of weeks yet. Enough already.

Posted in Macintosh, Software | No Comments »