ITS Documentation
Using Your ITS Entourage/Exchange Account [Macintosh]
S4329 • August 2007

This document explains how to use some of the Microsoft Entourage's features available in your ITS Exchange Service. Microsoft also offers good built-in help for Entourage — access it by clicking the Help menu.

NOTE: This document refers specifically to the Exchange Service provided by Information Technology Central Services (ITS). Some schools and departments — including the Business School, Business and Finance/MAIS, and the Institute for Social Research (ISR) — provide their own Exchange services.

WARNING! Earlier versions of Entourage 2004 had problems that could result in your losing data. Please verify that you have the latest version.

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Logging In (Authenticating)

Whenever you start Entourage to access your Exchange account, you will need to use a special login (authentication) configuration.

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Changing Your Exchange Password

The password you use to log in to your Exchange account is also known as your Windows Active Directory password. You can change your password as often as you like.
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Checking Your Mailbox Size

A basic Exchange mailbox has a 500 megabyte (MB) size limit (quota). Larger size limits are also available.

You'll receive a warning whenever your Exchange account is within 10 percent of its size limit. Should you exceed your limit, you will still be able to receive messages, but you will not be able to send any until you remove enough messages to put your account below the limit.

It's easy to keep track of your account's size. We also recommend you regularly back up (archive) your data to help manage your account and keep it within the limit. Archiving is covered in the next section.

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Backing Up (Archiving) Your Data

LSA FACULTY & STAFF: LSAIT does not recommend archiving. Please read their information.
Backing up — or archiving — provides an easy way to keep your Exchange account within its size limit. You may wish to keep older e-mail and other Exchange data but no longer need to have them available on the Exchange server. You can also elect to have older items deleted.

Entourage only allows manually archiving, but it's very simple.

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Deleting and Restoring Messages

There are two steps to deleting messages:

  1. Select a message and — from the Edit menu — choose Delete. This moves the message to the Deleted Items folder but does not permanently remove it from your Exchange account. You can restore the message by removing it from the Deleted Items folder anytime prior to completing Step 2.

  2. To permanently delete items:
    NOTE: Messages that you have deleted in this step can be restored within three days. After three days, you can no longer restore messages deleted with these steps.

    1. Click the Deleted Items folder to see the deleted messages, or — if there are folders inside the Deleted Items folder — expand the Deleted Items folder by clicking the triangle next to it.

    2. Select the item you wish to permanently delete.

    3. From the Edit menu, click Delete Message or Delete Folder.
You can also set Entourage to automatically delete messages from the Deleted Items folder.
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Scheduling with Your Calendar

To schedule meetings with people who:

  • USE THE ITS EXCHANGE SERVICE: When you propose a meeting with others on the ITS Exchange network, you can view both when people are free and when they are busy. This information can help you better determine when to schedule meetings.
    NOTE: Some people may have disabled viewing their availability.

  • USE ENTOURAGE, OUTLOOK [WINDOWS], OR ANOTHER EXCHANGE SERVICE: You will not be able to see when people are busy, but you can still propose meetings and receive verification through your calendar.

  • DO NOT USE EXCHANGE, ENTOURAGE, OR OUTLOOK (WINDOWS): When you include these people in your proposal, they will automatically receive an e-mail inviting them, and they will need to reply via e-mail. They must also manually enter the meeting into their calendaring system.

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Accessing Folders as a Delegate

If you've delegated your E-mail, Calendar, or Contacts folders or you are authorized to access someone else's, here's how to use them as a delegate.

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Setting An Out of Office Message

An Out of Office or vacation message notifies people who are sending you e-mail that you are unavailable.

CAUTION! While an Out of Office message can be useful, it also has the potential to risk your personal security. Word your message carefully so that you don’t alert others that you are on vacation and your house, for example, is unattended.

You can create an Out of Office message two ways:

  • using your Exchange account, but your message is only available to other campus Exchange users. This is a good option if you only want U-M colleagues with Exchange accounts to receive it.

  • using the U-M Online Directory (UMOD) where your message is available to everyone sending you e-mail except U-M Exchange users. To also reach Exchange users, you must set the message from within your Exchange account as well.

Either way, Out of Office messages are sent whether or not you have Entourage running, and those who send you multiple messages will receive only one notification.

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Using The Global Address List (GAL)

The Global Address List (GAL) contains everyone who has a listing in the U-M Online Directory (UMOD). However, it does not list groups created in the UMOD.

The GAL provides a convenient way within Exchange to look up people, Exchange groups, departmental mailboxes, and calendar resources rather than using your web browser to access the UMOD.

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Organizing By Folders

Folders help you better manage your messages. Rather than keeping all of them in your Inbox, you can create folders for specific topics, such as projects or people. You’ll probably find it helpful to keep your replies on that topic in the same folder as well.

You can create folders on both the Exchange server and locally on your computer. You can access folders on the Exchange server from any computer you use to access your Exchange account. Personal folders, however, are only available on the computers where they reside. To find out how to put your personal folders on another computer, see Backing Up (Archiving) Your Data.

Entourage allows you to set up rules that automatically sort incoming messages and your replies into specific folders that you create. For example, you may wish all e-mail regarding a specific project to reside in a project folder rather than your Inbox and Sent Items folders. Creating rules is covered in the next section.

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Creating Rules

Rules can help you organize your e-mail messages. For example, you can create a rule so that all messages regarding a topic — such as a project — are automatically moved to a folder you've created. You can create rules that manage the messages when they arrive in your Inbox or at any other time you want to organize them. See also Organizing By Folders.

You've probably already created a specific rule that activates the Brightmail spam detection system. For another example of creating a rule, see Setting an Out of Office Message.

GOTCHA! All rules created in Entourage only work on the computer that you created them on — they're called client-side rules. If you use Entourage on different computers — for example, at work and at home — you should create the same rules on all computers. This includes the Brightmail rule. However, if you have access to a Windows computer, rules you create in Outlook are server-side — they work on every computer you use to access your Exchange account. For example, create the Brightmail rule in Outlook to have it work in both Entourage and Outlook regardless of what computer you use.

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Accessing Your Exchange Account from Off Campus

The standard Entourage configuration for Exchange does not work off campus, but you have several options to access your Exchange account.
NOTE: You can use any of these options on campus as well.

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Additional Resources

Visit ITS’s Information System to obtain ITS computer documentation and other resources. A list of relevant documents follows:

We welcome your comments; please send e-mail.

ITS’s Online Help Desk provides a variety of computing help resources.

For further help with Entourage and the ITS Exchange Service, send e-mail or phone (734) 764-HELP.

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Appendix A: Defending Against Spam

The ITS Exchange server uses the Brightmail spam detection system. To take advantage of Brightmail, you need to configure Entourage.

Please refer to Setting Up Spam Filtering in Setting Up Entourage/Exchange on a Macintosh (S4328).

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Appendix B: LSA Specific Information

Archiving:
    LSAIT does not recommend that its users manually archive business-related e-mail for two reasons. First, the resulting archived e-mail is removed from the ITS Exchange server and is no longer accessible to the University community. Secondly, data on hard drives or removable media (jump or thumb drive or CD/DVD) can be lost in the event of a system or hardware failure.

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