Mac Office Improves Exchange Support

An update to Office 2004 for the Mac offers improved access to Exchange and several bug fixes. Office 2004 for Mac SP2 includes updates to Entourage—Microsoft’s e-mail client and personal information manager for the Mac—as well as to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Most notably, SP2 addresses problems and limitations corporate users face when trying to use Entourage to access mail stored in a Microsoft Exchange server. The fixes include the following:

Better support for the Global Address List. Entourage now allows users to browse Exchange’s Global Address List (GAL). Prior to SP2, Entourage could access the GAL to verify e-mail addresses prior to sending mail, but end users could not see or search the GAL.

Delegate access. Entourage now supports Exchange’s “delegate access” feature, allowing users to give other users access to their e-mail, calendar, or contacts. Delegate access is often used by executives to let their administrative assistants view and edit their calendar.

Improved public folder support. Entourage SP2 offers significant performance improvements when accessing public folders and now supports public folders that contain calendar items.