Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

Typo, apologies. 2011.

I know we disagree on the severity of the problem Csound1. The problem here is typical of the lone Mac user in the multi-occupancy building with an Exchange server onsite (doctors, Lawyers, Publishers, freelancers). If nobody else has the problem in the office, one (nutty) Mac user (even if he is the boss) will not precipitate much action from the office IT department. In our case they have never archived a single mail for business reasons and that does not help with Mail or a switchover than took several days to populate, as did rebuilding Mail mailboxes.

So you sometimes have to take your own evasive action despite many people having success with Mail on Exchange.

From our own point of view we (our family) have no idea if 10.9.2 solves it because once you fork out £200 for Office there is no point in going back and trying.

Office for Mac is a dreadful piece of software, maybe by the 2013 release (1 year late already) MS may make it at least competent, good however is not something I would bet on.

Can anyone articulate specifically how (and why) to configure Exchange Server 2007 and OS X 10.9.2 to work together properly? Anyone using Exchange 2007 who's problems are now resolved (or never experienced)?

Upgrading to 10.9.2 has had no apparent effect and there is no indication in the release notes that it should. The word Exchange does not appear anywhere that I can see.

Like many others on this forum, and as previously said, my experience was that Mavericks installation caused Exchange synchronization issues not ever experienced previously i.e. with Lion or Mountain Lion. Also a frequent 'can't send using this server' error message when first sending an attachment. Goes through the second time always.

My workaround has been to fetch new email every minute, but that doesn't resolve the deleted message synchronization issue between iOS 7 and Mac Mail. The attachment issue is merely annoying.

Earth to Apple!

Sorry, I am not using Exchange 2007, but I can say that, on Exchange 2011 (via Rackspace) 10.9.2 eliminated the primary problem of large attachments (in my case, almost any attachment) causing Mail to "lose" the server. Prior to this update and like others with this problem, I had to right click my Inbox and take the account offline and then take it back online and the messages with attachments would suddenly go. Now, with 10.9.2, messages with attachments appear to go immediately, and for two days now I have yet to have an instance of Mail losing the server (whereas, pre-update it was an hourly occurrence). So, it appears to have solved at least this one common problem; I can't speak to the other problems on the list.

Regarding MS Office, it may be dreadful, but Apple has failed to make iWork even reasonably capable of importing and exporting from/to MS Office, which 99% of the working world is using, so until they do, most of us are stuck with it. Like many, I operate in an environment where I must share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations with iterations going back and forth. This cannot be done without all manner of formatting problems from mishandled fonts to misaligned graphics. If I could make everyone else in the loop switch to iWork, that would fix the problem, but that will never happen. Either Apple needs to man up and make the transition literally foolproof or forever be the irrelevant also-ran in this area. And, speaking of a lack of updated software, Csound1, when's the last time Apple updated iWork?

walterfromhouston wrote:

Regarding MS Office, it may be dreadful, but Apple has failed to make iWork even reasonably capable of importing and exporting from/to MS Office, which 99% of the working world is using, so until they do, most of us are stuck with it.

All iWork programs can open and export in MS Office formats, perhaps you failed to notice?

Csound1, when's the last time Apple updated iWork?

January 24, 2014

You clearly have never had to actually work with the exported and imported versions of complicated office files. It ultimately never results in truly compatible documents. The 2014 update did nothing to improve the programs for those of us who actually have to interact with the MS office world and was focused almost exclusively on supporting cloud-based activity. It was an "update" but not an "upgrade" for users.

walterfromhouston wrote:

You clearly have never had to actually work with the exported and imported versions of complicated office files

Of course I have, do you imagine that you are the only one dealing with MS crap.

Use Libre Office or buy a copy of MS Office.

Good luck.

My experience is that LibreOffice is mostly compatible with simple documents, but at the same time it can screw up small things here and there. The problem is that it doesn't tell you where it has screwed up and you can discover years later that a cross-reference has gone missing or formatting is screwed up, or numbered styles are no longer numbered. When you have to collaborate with MS Office users even a slight chance of those problems is a deal-breaker. Suggesting Libre Office indicates an extremely lucky case of an environment that only works with very simple office documents.

kaa2000 wrote:

My experience is that LibreOffice is mostly compatible with simple documents, but at the same time it can screw up small things here and there. The problem is that it doesn't tell you where it has screwed up and you can discover years later that a cross-reference has gone missing or formatting is screwed up, or numbered styles are no longer numbered. When you have to collaborate with MS Office users even a slight chance of those problems is a deal-breaker. Suggesting Libre Office indicates an extremely lucky case of an environment that only works with very simple office documents.

That is why I said use Libre Office or purchase a copy of MS Office (which also has compatibility issues between disparate versions)

The only way to ensure compatibility is to us THE SAME program as created the document, right down to platform and version.

As I said before MS Office formats and apps are junk.

Again, you are suggesting LibreOffice to someone who seem to work exclusively with MS Office users. This just not gonna work. Different versions of Office don't have nearly the same incompatibilities as LibreOffice vs any version of MS Office.

Whether MS Office formats and apps are junk is not a question, but Office 2013 is pretty good. If only Mac Office was as good.

use Libre Office or purchase a copy of MS Office

Do you not understand the word 'or'

A choice was offered but you seem unable to discern between offering a choice, or not.

Have a nice day.

I havent had any problems integrating any of my legacy documents, even with the new Apple "iwork" products. So i uninstalled my Office 2008, silverlight, and everything in the Libraries prefixed Microsoft. Libre is more like Office to use, but the functionality seems to be in iwork, just need to look where they hid it. Then again I dont use pivot tables, macros etc. .

Interestingly UK Government just announced their intention to pilot the use of Open office products across the entire Civil Service. Hmmm we'll see.

Yeah, you don't know what you are talking about. The person is working in the MS Office environment, and you are suggesting that LibreOffice is an option. There's no "Choice", anyone bringing up anything other than MS Office in this scenario doesn't know what they are talking about.

One-way one-time conversion is feasible, if there's not too many MS-specific features in the documents. It's the continous interchanging use of MS and non-MS Office is what is impossible at this point.