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Filed under: Enterprise, Software, Switchers, Odds and ends, Snow Leopard

Tired of those winmail.dat files? Letter Opener 3 can help

If there's anything that drives Mac users into a frenzy, it's those winmail.dat files that can show up in Apple Mail when they receive email from colleagues or friends using Microsoft Outlook. Winmail.dat files can either files that are attached to the message, or they can contain information such as embedded documents, meeting requests, address card info, notes, or forwarded messages sent as attachments. Regardless of the content, they're just plain annoying on the Mac.

restoroot, a Mac development firm out of Millstatt, Austria, has the solution for you. Letter Opener 3 (€19.99 or €9.99 upgrade for version 2.0 owners) is an Apple Mail plugin that can ease winmail.dat frustrations. Letter Opener has been recently updated for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it can:
  • Convert Outlook schedules, appointments, and tasks to iCal
  • Convert Outlook contacts to Address Book
  • Open nested messages in winmail.dat files
  • Translate notes from Outlook
  • Let you read delivery status and read receipt messages
Especially for Mac users who are the "lone rangers" in a Windows environment, Letter Opener 3 can make life a little bit smoother. It's great to see that this plugin has been made compatible with Snow Leopard.

Filed under: Enterprise, Software, Odds and ends, Other Events

Microsoft Mac Business Unit announces details of next version of Office for Mac

With Microsoft Office for Mac still owning a hefty portion of the Mac software market, it's always news when the Mac Business Unit decides to spill the beans on their product plans for the future.TUAW's Michael Rose was on the press call this morning and noted the headlines, with details in the press release in the 2nd half of the post:
  • Next month, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will be trimmed down to 2 editions: Home/Student and Business Edition. The new SKUs for Business Edition 2008 will be available next month. This makes more sense than the 3 editions currently available.
  • The Office 2008 Business Edition includes Entourage Web Services Edition & Microsoft Document Connection
  • Entourage Web Services Edition ships today (August 13, 2009)
  • Office 2008 Business Edition has extra templates, clip art and bundled Lynda.com training lessons
  • Upgrade costs for 2008 Business Edition $240, full licenses $340; Entourage Web Services update will be free for existing Office 2008 users
  • One More Thing: The next Mac Office version will be ready by holiday season 2010, and includes a 'brand new application' -- Microsoft Outlook for Mac (!)
  • Outlook for Mac will be a Cocoa app, will sync tasks and notes, and has a new database supporting Spotlight searches; IRM for confidential data controls.
  • There was no announcement from Microsoft on any Office for iPhone development to date
  • Visual Basic returns in Office 2010
See the continuation of this post for the full press release from the Mac BU.

Continue readingMicrosoft Mac Business Unit announces details of next version of Office for Mac

Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools

Calgoo products now support iCal sync

Here's good news for users of 30 Boxes and Calgoo Hub. Earlier this week, Calgoo announced two-way iCal synchronization for 30 Boxes, Google Calendar, and Outlook. Calgoo account holders can get started by logging in to their account.

For the uninitiated, 30 Boxes is an online calendar that includes to-do lists, event management, people finder and more. Calgoo is a company whose mission in life is to simplify the calendars people use. It's their new Calgoo Connect service that lets iCal play nicely with these others.

Check it out, and let us know how it goes.

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools

Groupcal 3: manage your Exchange calendar from iCal

Are you a Mac user living in an Exchange world, forced to trudge through Entourage? (Don't get me wrong: Entourage is fine, but 'trudge' is just a good verb for dramatic effect.) Well trudge no longer with Groupcal 3, an addon for iCal that allows you to access, manage, edit and synchronize your Exchange calendars and tasks. Also on the feature list are: subscribing to coworker's free time, sending/receiving meeting invites, sharing/publishing calendars through .Mac or WebDAV and even syncing with an iPod or Palm through iSync.

Groupcal 3 is a Universal Binary, a demo is available and a single licenses costs $55. As you might expect, multi-license packs are available starting at 5 seats, moving all the way up to 500 and 1000 pack licenses.

[via MacMerc]

Filed under: Software, Switchers, How-tos

Move an address book from Outlook to OSX

address book logoOne question I see asked all over the place by switchers is how to move an address book from Outlook on Windows to Address Book in OSX. I've seen utilities and scripts out there that claim to do it, but I've never had or heard of much luck with them. If you're in the same boat, a post over at macosxhints.com lays out a down and dirty method using Mozilla's address book and Excel to shuffle all your contacts from Outlook into an LDIF format that OSX's Address Book can import.

Sounds nasty I know, but if you've been having issues like this and have all but given up - this could be your contacts' last hope. If anyone gives this a whirl, (I switched years ago) please feel free to post your experience.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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