Alea jacta Ouest

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with the product. I’m just a satisfied user. I just heard about it when it was in public beta, tried it and immediately liked it, but as with anything, your mileage may vary.

Spanning Tools for Mac is a set of utilities that have been created by the authors of Spanning Sync.

The tremendous potentials of Sync Services are obvious to all. Being able to share data between applications, between computers or with additional devices (iPhone anybody??) is wonderful, but for a lot of us, it sometimes turns in a living hell: Data corruption, duplications (endless duplications), loss, syncing stops altogether or a process related to syncing systematically crashes in the background.

Syncing is “less than stellar” for many. While third party applications could be buggy, most now agree that Sync Services have issues and are prone to corruption and we are all desperately waiting for a fix from Apple.

There are several options out there to help you deal with SyncServices issues. I strongly recommend reading the article about SyncServices Troubleshooting on the Entourage Help Website.

The Spanning Sync folks have a lot of experience with Sync Services and quickly identified several sources of corruptions and syncing problems. Then created a set of tools that will analyze your address book and calendar, looking for corruptions or potential sources of troubles and offer you to fix them. This suite offers three applications:

A calendar and contact cleaner, each targeting the corresponding databases on your Mac, and Sync Tune-Up, for more generalized and drastic solutions (more about that later)

The two “Cleaner” applications follow more or less the same approaches. You can chose what to check in the preferences and then let the applications do their magic.

For instance, if I take the Calendar Cleaner, I have the choice between nine potential sources of problems:

Once the scan is done, the application lists all problematic items, with a detailed description of the problems.

You can then decide how you want it fixed, and let the application do the rest.

The Contact Cleaner is similar and scans for a dozen of possible sources of problems.

The third application, Sync Tune-Up, takes a more generalized approach. A first panel lets you unregister an application from Sync Services, and a second one offers you to 1) disable SyncServices 2) force a fresh sync and 3) go nuclear and trash all Sync Service data from your Mac to force all applications to repopulate it all from scratch. Not something you should consider lightly, but when you’re desperate…

This set of utilities is shareware: $19.99, with $5 off for Spanning Sync customers.
Some might argue it’s a bit on the pricey side, but it has literally saved my bacon multiple times and corrected nasty issues I was having both with Entourage and MobileMe more than once. For me it was priceless. Read the rest of this entry »

My post on Archiving your e-mails with EagleFiler is out on The Entourage Help Blog

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Mon billet sur « Sauvegarder ses e-mails avec EagleFiler » est disponible (en anglais) sur « The Entourage Help Blog »

A couple of days ago, Microsoft posted on their site an announcement about the availability of a new beta for Entourage.
This new version allows Exchange 2007 users to access their e-mails through Exchange Web Services (EWS for short). This has serious advantages over the previous method (using WebDAV).

• Much faster
• You can now sync categories, tasks notes, etc,

Now be careful. This update is not for everybody.

• It cannot connect to an exchange server through WebDAV, so if you have an account on Exchange 2003, don’t even think about installing it. If you have more than one Exchange account, one on 2003 and the other on 2007, it’s a no-go there too.
• It requires Exchange 2007 SR1 on both the front-end server (usually OWA) and the mailbox server (back-end). MS also mentions that the minimal requirement would be SR1 with rollup 4 (the latest update as of today is rollup 6). Apparently these updates corrected a lot of WebServices-related issues. You can usually figure out what’s installed on your server by connecting through OWA: On the top right part of your Page click on Options. On the Option page, select About (bottom of the left-side panel). The presulting page usually lists the version installed on OWA and the mailbox server. Figuring out which rollup you have is not always easy. Mine says 8.1.336.0, which means:
  8: Exchange 2007
  1: SR1
  336.0: that’s the build number and this one corresponds to Rollup 5.
  At this point, I’m not sure what version corresponds to Rollup 4…

How to get it:
Go to the blog post I indicated, read everything then click on the link on the bottom of the page.
This leads to Connect, Microsoft beta-testing reporting platform. You can create an account there and apply for the beta. It takes them a couple of days to review the applications and give you access to the download link and reporting forms (for the bugs).

With all that in mind, it looks like a great beta to me. I hope people will install it and report tons of bugs that MS will be able to fix quickly for a nice and stable release.

(in French since the application is mostly directed at people who at least understand French)

Antidote RX vient d’être mis à jour en version 8.
J’avais parlé précédemment de cette excellente application permettant de corriger le français en s’intégrant dans de nombreuses applications (dont Office).
Au menu, de nombreuses nouvelles locutions, des corrections de bogues divers et une intégration améliorée à de nombreuses applications.
Les notes de la mise à jour sont ici.

The PocketMac folks just gave me access to their latest app: PocketMac iCalScreenSaver.
I must admit that I like it
It’s a MacOS X Screen saver that will display your calendar for the day, then the week, then the month. You can select which calendar to display, and they offer a few themes.

One limitations though: The application only works with iCal. If you manage your calendar in Entourage, you will have to enable SyncServices in the Preferences to let Entourage sync your calendar to iCal and make it accessible to iCalScreenSaver.

iCalScreenSaver is a $9.95 shareware (and now my default screen saver)

Les développeurs de PocketMacviennent de me mettre à disposition une copie de leur dernier logiciel : PocketMac iCalScreenSaver.
Je dois admettre que je le trouve pas mal du tout
C’est un économiseur d’écran pour MacOS X Screen qui affiche votre calendrier pour le jour, la semaine puis le moi. Il offre également quelques thèmes différents.
Un seul point noir : L’application ne fonctionne qu’avec iCal. SI vous utilisez Entourage pour gérer votre calendrier, vous devrez activer la synchronisation avec les SyncServices dans les préférences d’Entourage pour qu’il se synchronise avec iCal et que les données soient donc accessibles à iCalScreenSaver.

iCalScreenSaver est shareware a $9.95 (et maintenant mon économiseur d’écran par défaut).

(en français plus bas)

I’ve been rather silent lately. It’s a bit sad since there was a lot of things to talk about. It’s just that I’ve been really overwhelmed and I just could not find the time to sit down and post here everything that was going on…

• One of the most important news is that VBA is coming back in the next version of Office. That means that everybody who relies on VBA (and I know quite a few) will benefit from a rewritten VBA implementation as of Office… 20xx?
• The Office for Mac team blog also announced that the Solver would be back for Office 2008 (free of charge) in mid-September.
• The Office 12.1.1 update came out. This update fixes the creator type code issue that prevented people from opening their files through a simple double-click is gone.
  The problem was related to downloaded files getting (through the application downloading them) outdated creator codes. For some undisclosed reason related to security, Office was refusing to open them. You had to use the Open command in Office. Well this is history now (and so are the scripts I wrote to fix the issue by correcting the creator code of affected files).
  The update brings along the latest Auto-Updater update. This means that if you install Office 208 today, all you need is the 12.1.0 update, then the 12.1.1. You can skip the auto-update update if you have already downloaded these two.
  With the new version I’m not experiencing as many SyncServices issues as I used to. Not perfect, but better…
• Office 11.5.0 is also out. A combo updater (so you can go straight from 10.0 to 10.5) bringing support for Office 2008 XML-based files if you also install the converters.
• Messenger 7.0.1 is out. Not much to say about it.
• Remote Desktop Connection 2.0 final is also out. The new version brings additional bug fixes and also a few improvements over the last beta.
• The EndNote folks released their Word 2008 add-on. A major re-write with serious improvements (seems a lot faster on my Mac). Only for EndNote X1… The installer works well if both Office and EndNote are in /Applications and if the Word startup folder hasn’t been customized. It wasn’t the case for me so I had to perform the installation manually. Not hard, but it’s a bit of a pain.

That’s it for now

J’ai été assez silencieux dernièrement. Ce n’est pas que je n’avais rien à dire, mais j’ai été atrocement débordé et je n’ai simplement pas eu le temps de venir par ici pour poster des nouvelles.

• Une des nouvelles les plus importantes est sans doute que le VBA sera de retour dans la prochaine version d’Office. Une excellent e nouvelle pour tous ceux qui se reposent sur ce language de macro commandes pour Office (et j’en connais un certain nombre). Cette version sera réécrite et on peut donc espérer des améliorations de performances du VBA dans Office …20XX ?
• Le blog officiel des développeurs d’Office a également annoncé que le solveur sera de retour pour Office 2008 gratuitement à la mi-septembre.
• La mise à jour Office 12.1.1 est disponible. Cette mise à jour fixe notamment le soucis lié aux codes créateurs qui empêchait l’ouverture par un simple double-clic de fichiers téléchargés par certaines applications. Ces applications ajoutaient un code créateur obsolète et pour des raisons liés à la sécurité (que Microsoft n’a pas expliquées) Office refusait de les ouvrir ainsi. Vous deviez passer par le menu Ouvrir dans Office.
  Tout ça est de l’histoire ancienne (tout comme le sont les scripts que j’avais écrits pour corriger le code créateur sur ces fichiers).
  Cette mise à jour apporte également la dernière version du module de mise à jour automatique. Cela sous-entend que pour mettre une version 12.0 à jour vous n’avez besoin que de la mise à jour 12.1.0 puis de la 12.1.1. Vous pouvez ignorer la mise à jour de l’auto-mise à jour si vous avez déjà téléchargé ces deux dernières
  Avec cette nouvelle version j’ai beaucoup moins de soucis avec les SyncServices. Pas parfait, mais mieux…
• Office 11.5.0 est également disponible. Une mise à jour combinée qui permet au demeurant de passer directement de 10.0 à 10.5.0 et apporte le support pour les fichiers Office 2008 basées sur le XML pour peu que vous installiez les convertisseurs.
• Messenger 7.0.1 est disponible. Pas grand chose à jouter.
• Remote Desktop Connection 2.0 final est disponible. Quelque corrections de bogues et quelques améliorations par rapport à la dernière version béta.
• Les développeurs d’EndNote on mis en ligne leur module externe pour Word 2008. Une ré-écriture massive du module d’intégration (qui semble bien plus rapide sur mon Mac). Uniquement pour EndNote X1. L’Installateur fonctionne correctement si Office et EndNote sont dans /Applications et si vous n’avez pas personnalisé le dossier d’ouverture au démarrage de Word. Ça n’était pas mon cas, et j’ai donc du faire l’installation à la main. Pas atroce, mais fastidieux. Grâce à cette mise à jour, nombre de chercheurs par ici ont pu abandonner Office 2004 et passer sous 2008.

C’est tout pour maintenant