I’ve had a rough time with Outlook for the Mac 2011, which is Microsoft’s attempt to build a business-grade email and contact management app. It was meant to be a leg up from Entourage, with more comprehensive support for Exchange servers, but actually getting it to work has been a job and a half.

With the release of the Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 2, I had hopes that the worst offenses of Outlook would be eradicated, that perhaps Microsoft would begin to focus on making the app actually usable. For me, it hasn’t been, and I can only begin to summarize the problems.

At first blush, it seemed a fairly promising app, though the implementation of Microsoft’s infamous ribbon, a new take on the traditional contextual toolbar, is poor. Buttons appear to have been thrown together without a true sense of design, though the key functionality is there. That assumes, of course, that the functions actually work, and therein lies a tale.

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This article was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2012 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Contact Management, Microsoft, microsoft exchange server, Microsoft Office, Office For Mac, Outlook.