We have a Mac here at work running OS10, and I have a weird problem with Entourage, but know nothing about Macs.

Basically the user is using the calendar and inviting a person to a meeting, then clicking on the schedule button to check there availability but nothing is showing up and the row is a nice grey colour.

I manually added an appointment to her calendar and that isnt shown on the schedule either. However it is in her outlook calendar on the server, I checked using my PC.

Email is working fine, and is instant.

It looks as if when trying to use the calendar its using 2 separate calendars, I cant figure out how though.

Anyone know?

Nobody?

I have no experience of Entourage I'm afraid but will try and help out if I can. The free/busy data shown in "schedule" is held separately from the actual calendar data on the server. I think its safe to assume the solid grey bar means the same as it does in outlook - which is that the free/busy data on the server for the invited user/s is not present/corrupt, or for some reason the Mac cannot access it.

Can you see the free busy status (of the user/s that your user is inviting) on a Windows box? Is it the same for all invitees on the mac, or just some people?

I did a quick google for "entourage free busy" and there seem to be plenty of useful sources of info - and quite a few reports of similar problems.....

it might be an encription problem as i know some OS X machines have some weird problems logging onto 2k3 domains but ill have a word later on and see if i can find out anything for you.

Also what version of OS X is it do you know? (Blue apple in the top left > about this mac > will be 10.x.x) sorry it thats obvious to you

You'll find that Entourage is quite close to a big bag of ****. Most of the workarounds that help it with Exchange are rather large security holes that most network admins won't want to do.

I've worked here for 2 years on a Mac using Entourage. I still can't use the schedule/calendar properly and have only just managed to get the Global Address List.

Sounds like a Free/Busy server issue to me. In Entourage go to:

Tools -> Accounts

Choose the Exchange tab, and then your account from the list and click 'Edit'

Click the 'Advanced' tab and check the 'Free/Busy server' box. If it's empty that may be your problem. If it's not, then make sure it's pointing to the right place. (may need some google and the network admin for this). Should (possibly) be YOURSERVER/public/ or something similar? (again, never managed to get mine to work).

Thanks for the help so far. All I know is the version of os x is unpatched, and the same with the email client. I suggested she tried updating, but she is reluctant to because the installer said it could break more than it fixes. Will checkout the free/busy thing.

I suggested she tried updating, but she is reluctant to because the installer said it could break more than it fixes.

:rofl:

Is that a sly dig at M$?

I would check the permissions on the public folders (the free/busy is stored in a hidden one... look in ESM)

and at the end of the day... the mac is on YOUR network... so tell her "update or log off"

OSX updates wont break more stuff than it will fix thats total pish tell her to update and stop messin about

We had something similar. There's a handful of Mac G5s used in marketing. Can't remember the exact details but we had to patch up the Exchange servers with a couple of hotfixes and stick the latest edition of Office 2004 on the Macs (which is where I got involved).

I'm not that keen on Entourage truth be told. The Exchange 2003 webmail interface gives the functionality most users need with the look and feel of Windows Outlook 2003. That said I've not tried it on a Mac yet - it may get kranky when it can't find IE6.

Well. I tried the public folder fix, and today received an email. It doesnt work, so I am still at square one.

Our exchange 2003 server has all the latest patches installed, I know because its me that patches as it a few days after MS release them. I guess I need to patch entourage. Whats the current version, and patch level so I know what to work from.

The webmail interface seems to work fine. She has the mac version of IE installed, its a bit clanky with regards to proxy settings but seems to work.

We clean installed Office 2004 from the latest Select CD we have, labelled up as August 2005 IIRC. It's got SP2 applied anyway. Calendar, Public folders and the GAL are all working OK.

The Macs are G5 cheese grater towers with the shipping version of 10.3 installed. I doubt they're patched up. Office was clean installed, unless you count 98 running in OS9 emulation. :eek:

mannyo get rid of explorer on her mac for the love of........insert name here...........

use firefox or safari they are so much more upto date M$ hadn't updated it for about 2 years before they canned it

We have a Mac here at work running OS10,

OS10? whats that then?

I think you mean OSX, which is technically said OS TEN, and not OS X.... Might read the rest of the thread in a moment :P

mannyo get rid of explorer on her mac for the love of........insert name here...........

use firefox or safari they are so much more upto date M$ hadn't updated it for about 2 years before they canned it

I was under the impression the MS stuff worked better on the mac than the pc? Lotus notes works very well on the mac, in fact its better than the pc version.

Not keen on firefox on the mac, will only let me download 2 files at once!

Just installed parralls at the moment to run windows, as the Microsoft money isnt available for mac. Unless anyone else uses any decent home accounts package?

thread hijack over...