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.