John Olmstead asks:

I am trying to export my Outlook mail messages into Entourage. I thought that since these are both Microsoft products, it would be a straightforward process. My mistake.

The only information I can find on either the Outlook or Mactopia sites references an MBOX file format that both Outlook and Entourage allegedly support although neither program has this format listed in the file tab for exporting or importing information.

This can't be as difficult as Microsoft is making it out to be, can it?

A: It can be, but doesn't have to. The easiest method is to use an inexpensive utility called Outlook2Mac (O2M) from Little Machines. It will move email, contacts, and calendar appointments Outlook for Windows to your Mac's Entourage, Apple® Mail, Address Book, iCal, or other Mac OS X programs.

The O2M software runs in Windows, lets you select what you need, and exports the data to files in a variety of formats (including the .mbox format) that you can import to Entourage and the other Mac programs.

Jonathan Hutchins sent in an easy fix for an issue with Mac OS X inserting afp:// in front of an smb:// path in the Connect to Server dialog (Go menu):

There is a simple solution:

smb://<servername> works.

smb:\\<servername> will cause OS X to insert the afp:// prefix (and won't work).

We note that Mac OS X will turn the backwards slashes in the correct (Unix) forward slashes. (Why it adds afp:// is a mystery to us.) We also note that this behavior is not limited to Leopard, but occurs with Tiger (10.4) as well.

Christian confirms that deleting .tbd files enables Win XP clients to connect to Leopard Server:

Just wanted to let you know that I tried your fix for this problem and it worked perfectly. I had a machine that had been upgraded from 10.3.9 server to Leopard Server and couldn't connect a Windows XP machine that had previously connected. I was pulling my hair out.

Adriana Shmahalo has a problem with Leopard where Windows shares disconnect or disappear without warning:

Have the same problem as another user. Updated to system 10.5.5 and it got worse. I think it started happening since 10.3 update. My Windows shares behave very strange: sometimes they show and sometimes they don't and today is not a good day. I was able to see them for a brief moment and they disconnected again. This has nothing to do with any other network connections - I can go online just fine.

If you've seen this problem

Michael Noll has a problem similar to previous report:

I am having the same problem with Leopard and using AFP to access a Windows 2003 Server. When I create a folder on the server, the folder is locked from any Tiger workstation, but works OK from a Leopard workstation.

If you've seen this problem

When John Renna wakes his Mac from sleep, a previously connected Windows 2003 share can't neither reconnect nor disconnect:

Whenever I leave my iMac (OS X 10.5) idle for an extended time, when I return and wake the computer I can no longer access the drive on a Windows Server 2003 media server. It will show the spinning wheel in the Finder with the message "connecting to server" next to it. After a minute or so it will say "connection failed." Now, if I try and eject the drive so that I can reconnect to it I get an error message telling me that my drive is in use and cannot be ejected. At this point I have to completely restart my iMac and connect to the server again.

If you've seen this problem

Erick Abad has a better workaround for the problem of of garbled email messages from Exchange Server viewed from iPhone or iPod Touch.

I have a better an easier way without have to BCC.

I added a folder in Exchange called "Sent Messages" or "Sent Messages 08". You can call it whatever you want. It's a good way to manage your sent emails from Exchange by creating folders per year or quarter if you wish. In Entourage, I have a rule to move sent messages to my Sent 08 folder automatically when I compose mail on my desktop.

On my iPhone, I just mass select the emails I've sent from the iPhone in the "Sent" folder and move them to the "Sent Messages". For some reason, moving email from Exchange through the iPhone to one of the folders reverts the emails to normal. It's no longer unformatted mime files. Headers, subject, formatting is all there.

If you've tried this

Adam Prall offers a way to fix a Boot Camp problem with Windows Vista and two monitors in which one of the displays is dim:

Install WinACD from SourceForge (Vista 32-bit only). It gives you brightness controls for Apple Cinemas.

We've previously reported WinACD as a way to use a 30" Cinema Display with Boot Camp.

David Clancy responded to Friday's report of slow VMware Fusion 2.0 performance with multiple monitors:

I've been using the new Fusion 2 and have found very degraded performance in unity using multiple displays and using multiple Microsoft programs. I'm in the financial community and prepare presentations in Power Point using information from Excel spreadsheets as the source. When I have multiple spreadsheets open on one monitor and power point open on another the performance between the two becomes unusable in unity. If I switch back to single window mode then the issue goes away. Looking at the Activity Monitor in both OS X and windows shows low CPU and memory usage in unity so I don't know what is causing this. It is a real issue since it really diminishes the multiple monitor advantage. it forces me to go back to boot camp. I'm running XP home, on a SR 2.4mhz MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM.

If you've seen this problem with Fusion 2.0

James Cutler responded to last week's report of a reader who was losing date and time information when moving photos from Vista to Mac OS X:

This loss of date information in file metadata happens in many situations, not just in the one described. I have not found any simple solution.

However, the file creation date can be corrected on a Mac using A Better Finder Attributes to copy the embedded image exposure date and time to the file creation date and time.

If you've used A Better Finder Attributes or found another way to retain this info

Robert Douek reports that the ChubbyBunny build of SheepShaver is unstable:

I am running 10.5.5 on an Intel iMac (2007 Aluminium) and have found that the ChubbyBunny build is very unstable. I can regularly cause it to crash by opening Word 5.1 (which I need to open some really old docs created under Word 1 & 2). It reads the docs just fine, but if I try to scroll quickly with the scroll wheel, after a moment or two, the whole OS 9 environment crashes. Can't say what is the cause but if the info is helpful in developing a fix, that would be great. Thanks and good luck to whoever takes a crack at it.

Note that another reader reported that there are newer builds of SheepShaver available.

If you've used SheepShaver to run OS 9 on Intel Macs

Ed Chavez is having a problem with accessing SMB file shares in Leopard, but found a way around it:

I was able to successfully bind the Mac to Active Directory but when I would try to connect to server it would always fail. The error indicated Finder was adding an AFP prefix. In other words, I would type in smb://servername/share which would fail. The error message would say cannot connect to afp://smb://servername/share.

Enabling and disabling file sharing had no effect. I was able to resolve this by using the Kerebos application found in Core Services. I had to manually add a Kerebos ticket for the user. Once I did, Finder no longer added the AFP prefix.

If you've seen this problem

Several readers responded to Monday's report of email messages from Exchange Server that were garbled when viewed from and iPhone or iPod Touch. The Entourage Help Blog describes the problem and an AppleScript that lets you read the messages. (Thanks to Michael Wilmar, Shane Palmerm Chris Little, and Mark Richman for the tip.)

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent another workaround:

This is a known problem. Messages sent from an iPhone appear in Entourage's "Sent Items" folder as unformatted mime files. There is a workaround: just bcc yourself on outgoing email messages, then find messages from yourself in your "Inbox" and move them to the "Sent Items" folder. Delete the mime files by sorting by subject and they'll show up at the top of the list as <no subject>. If this workaround weren't so easy, I'd have already contacted Microsoft to address the issue.

Jason Halvorson writes:

We have seen this where I work too: Exchange Server 2003, iPhone 2.0 - iPhone 2.1, and Entourage 2004/08. The messages appear correctly in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Outlook Web Access. Apparently it's known to Microsoft as well. The header information is not displayed in Entourage 2004 for an email message that is sent by using Exchange ActiveSync.

Donald Wagner sent us a similar note:

This is a known issue with any message sent via ActiveSync and Entourage. It was an error in Exchange 2004 and was not corrected in Exchange 2008.

Sylvain Bois said the iPod Touch is not immune:

I have the same issue using iPod Touch on an Exchange server.

Erik Ableson isn't seeing the problem at all:

Just a quick note to pass on that we have 6 iPhones in the office connecting to Exchange 2008, originally with a direct port mapping through the firewall, and now via ISA server with no anomalies of this type. Currently using a self-signed certificate.

Gyalwa is not happy with the new multiple-screen capabilities of VMware 2.0:

VMWare meets all my needs but the area that I had hopes for and am being let down in is the new multi-screen capability in 2.0. I am fortunate enough to be trying this with three identical screens (three Apple 30" Cinema Displays) so multi-screen does function for me in both Unity and full screen modes (others have reported problems when screen sizes are not identical).

The problem is performance! Graphic performance is jerky and unresponsive even to the point of simple web page scrolling being jerky when in multi-screen mode. VMWare are reporting to users that this is a graphics card hardware issue. However, when I run three Vista VMs each in single screen mode (one for each screen) performance in all VMs is smooth and fast (a credit to Fusion). I tested all this on an 8 core Mac Pro with 10GB of RAM with top graphics cards which is why it is able to work fine in single screen mode. I also expect this to work in multi-screen mode for a single VM spread across all screens as the product specs lead you to believe. Currently it does not fulfill this for many users and my testing above has eliminated hardware as the root cause to this problem that Fusion has.

Everything is the latest, including Mac OS X 10.5.5.

If you've seen this problem

For more on Fusion, see our VMware Fusion Tips and Reports page.

Techno-Grafik is now shipping iTaskX 2.5 (80 euros, free upgrade), project management solution for Mac OS X that is compatible with Microsoft Project. iTaskX supports Microsoft's MS Project XML and MS Project MPX formats, and can exchange calendars, resources (persons/materials), and more than sixty additional task fields. iTaskX 2.5 adds the ability to open the native MS Project .mpp file format. iTaskX 2.5 is now a universal binary (native on Intel and PowerPC Macs) and is optimized for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.