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Re: Entourage 2004 Freeze
steve626 #2734 09/02/09 04:21 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Thanks. Do they specifically mean the same account using both 2004/2008, e.g. 2004 on a desktop, 2008 on a laptop? Do they mean shared calendars or appointments between users on different versions? Do they mean the server will have problems, or just the client? Do they mean all version of Exchange server or just certain ones?

Sure, feature discrepancies will make differences between the apps apparent and certain things not work across versions, and certain things will display differently, but for basic calendaring and email I don't see why cross-versioning would actually cause significant problems. It's not unusual.

Are there kb articles you can point to? Or anything else more specific? I'm not challenging you -- please don't take this the wrong way -- I'm genuinely interested in more info. I'm also wondering if MS pre-sales wasn't giving the lazy company line: for all of our new features to work well, you'll all need the latest version of everything. Which is not the same thing as saying you'll actually have problems if you don't. Thanks again!


Keeper of the Magic Nickel
Re: Entourage 2004 Freeze
donikatz #2785 09/03/09 04:30 AM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Originally Posted By: donikatz
Thanks. Do they specifically mean the same account using both 2004/2008, e.g. 2004 on a desktop, 2008 on a laptop? Do they mean shared calendars or appointments between users on different versions? Do they mean the server will have problems, or just the client? Do they mean all version of Exchange server or just certain ones?

... for basic calendaring and email I don't see why cross-versioning would actually cause significant problems ...

Are there kb articles you can point to? Or anything else more specific? ...


I think the incompatibilities with Office 2004 and 2008 (and Office 2003 and 2007) arise primarily in the calendaring aspects of Office when utilized with a central Microsoft Exchange Server from which all users calendars (say, within a company) are being handled. The way it was explained to us, by Microsoft, is that if there is a calendar notice for 20 people, and 19 are using Office 2007/2008, but there is a single one using Office 2003/2004, that one user can "corrupt" the meeting notices resulting in calendar items simply disappearing, being "ghosted" (not going away when they should), or having duplicates. Other oddities include events scheduled at, say, 2pm, being displayed as being at 4pm instead, things like that. Or even more dramatically, just one or two Office 2003/2004 users among thousands (all of the others having updated to 2004/2008) can cause such corruptions as well. Some of these problems arise within the Server software, which apparently does not handle the old and new versions well together, others arise within the client softwares. We were told that using 2004 and 2008 on the same account is likely to lead to problems. We have site licenses for all these versions (and also get free CD's to take home to install on home computers used to access work emails/calendars), so cost is not an issue. Our company is mandating that all employees update to the latest versions, we've already purchased those licenses. Some users are holding back because they don't like the new appearance of Office 2007/2008 and want to stay with what they are used to.

You asked about kb articles -- in our case, we have thousands of users and our IT people have quickly become very knowledgeable about many subtleties in these issues that I think has gone far beyond those published articles. We have had teams of Microsoft engineers on our site and they have even made special versions of some software available to us for use before it was released, using us to test out some things. I long abandoned the MS knowledge base and instead simply call our IT folks. I've seen many anomalies and they have helped resolve most of them pretty well -- but they can only do so much with MS bugs. Some of the fixes have been implemented inside the Microsoft Exchange software configuration, which is something individual users do not normally see or have insight into.

If you are just using Entourage to retrieve email from a generic pop or imap email provider (not using a Microsoft Exchange [proprietary] Server), then I think any of the Office 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008 should work ok. With a Microsoft Exchange Server, however, we've been admonished to eliminate all Office 2003/2004 software being used in conjunction with it, and to only use 2007/2008.


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