Office365-Mac limitations

[PeterJP]

I'm terribly bothered by some limitations in the Mac port of MS Office (which I got through an Office 365 subscription). The company I currently work for has set up everything in Office 365 as well, including mail, so I thought I'd just add the Exchange account and set up my mail/calendar apps.
In the beginning, I tried to work with mac Mail and Calendar. But it seems impossible to access my company's contacts directory from anything but Outlook. When I look in Contacts, it shows the directory but it's empty. Of course, it's quite annoying when I need to mail somebody that I haven't mailed before. Also, distribution lists don't show up.
I then switched to Outlook. It looks horrible and the look-&-feel don't match macos, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I can find my contacts from the directory now. Now, I have some tools that can export calendar information in a standard Internet calendar format. Unfortunately, though, Outlook for mac doesn't support this. I tried adding them in Outlook Web, but they still don't show up in Outlook mac.
So, I'm stuck with either a dysfunctional mail, or a dysfunctional calendar.
Does anybody have suggestions for either of the above problems?

 

[MacNchedder]

I'm terribly bothered by some limitations in the Mac port of MS Office (which I got through an Office 365 subscription). The company I currently work for has set up everything in Office 365 as well, including mail, so I thought I'd just add the Exchange account and set up my mail/calendar apps.
In the beginning, I tried to work with mac Mail and Calendar. But it seems impossible to access my company's contacts directory from anything but Outlook. When I look in Contacts, it shows the directory but it's empty. Of course, it's quite annoying when I need to mail somebody that I haven't mailed before. Also, distribution lists don't show up.
I then switched to Outlook. It looks horrible and the look-&-feel don't match macos, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I can find my contacts from the directory now. Now, I have some tools that can export calendar information in a standard Internet calendar format. Unfortunately, though, Outlook for mac doesn't support this. I tried adding them in Outlook Web, but they still don't show up in Outlook mac.
So, I'm stuck with either a dysfunctional mail, or a dysfunctional calendar.
Does anybody have suggestions for either of the above problems?

The best solution is to use VM Ware's Fusion to allow you to run Windows and load the real Outlook

 

[blesscheese]

It seems that no matter what MS does, there are always significant differences / bugs in the Mac version of Office. The usual "fail-safe" solution has traditionally been to run Windows version of Office (unfortunately). Would your company pay for a copy of VM-Ware or Parallels, and a license for the Windows OS? (Oracle Virtual Box is free, but not as speedy or nice as VMWare or Parallels).

If not, I'm wondering if there may not be another solution...I may go try something out...I'll report back in 24 hours...

 

[PeterJP]

I was already afraid of that. I've used Outlook on Windows a lot in the last 2 years and it's a lot better than Outlook for mac. The latter looks and feels amateurish. Those icons! And when you look up the internet calendar issue, Microsoft actually tells you to use Outlook web! I can add the Internet calendar there allrighte Maybe it was possible to then make it show up in Outlook/mac, too, but in my case, it definitely doesn't.
After some googling, it seems there is no LDAP server open for Office 365. But Outlook can still access the directory. This must also be a problem for non-mac people using another email client, so I'll search some more. If I get that to work, I can avoid Outlook altogether.
Looking forward to your research, blesscheese. And bless cheese!

 

[PeterJP]

For some reason, the standard macos Contacts application now finds people in the Office 365 directory. I haven't really changed anything to its configuration. I tried adding an extra LDAP server to access this directory, but that never worked. One thing that I did, was click on the address that people use for the LDAP server for Office 365: https://outlook.office365.com/ews/exchange.asmx. When I did that, it gave me a message that "you have created a service". I don't know if this did the trick.

In any case, I can now live without Outlook. I can mail anybody in the directory from mail and I've added my Internet calendar in calendar. As a matter of fact, the macos calendar actually shows the internet calendar that I've added to Outlook web... so it can do more with Exchange servers than Outlook mac. Ridiculous, but there you have it.

The world is a better place without Outlook mac, yeay!

 

[PeterJP]

I just noticed that I lost my folder structure in the move back to macos mail. I don't know how it happened, but I lost the mails in the new folders, too.