MS Exchange: Can Eudora for E-mail and Entourage for Calendaring Coexist?

--On June 20, 2007 4:49:11 PM -0700 davidson <davidsonll.mit.edu> wrote:

> In response to kevinv:
>
> I understand the argument for a central organizational body to store
> E-mail for legal reasons. However, mail can be moved off even an IMAP
> server, so imposing IMAP does little to ensure that evidence couldn't be
> destroyed.

Actually it can. Exchange specifically has tools that allow for retention.
If I delete an e-mail message, our exchange server is configured to allow
me to recover that message for a specific period of time because the server
retains a copy of the message for that amount of time. These deleted, but
recoverable, messages are retained on backup too. Exchange also has more
extensive audit logs than most POP mail servers.

However, this is still not a guarantee that an entity won't destroy
evidence. Look at the Burst vs. Microsoft case, or the more recent "loss"
of e-mail sent by White House staff through the Republican National
Committee mail servers. Since Microsoft and the RNC run their own servers
there is no way to prevent deliberate destruction of e-mail by the server
operators. Centralized servers merely allow reducing the number of people
capable of such destruction.

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118635-page,1/article.html>
<http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/oversight-report-presidential-records/>

davidson wrote:
> They will support IMAP. However, I didn't want to go from POP to IMAP
> because of the complex storage and filtering system I have currently
> in place -- I don't want to break what has worked so well for so
> long. Also, I primarily use one computer to access my E-mail (my
> trusty PowerBook), which is backed up religiously every day (so there
> is no need to rely on a server for backup). I use a Treo handheld to
> "flywheel" for the times (never more than a couple of hours) that the
> use of the PowerBook is impractical.
 
I use SeaMonkey (Thunderbird's ugly duckling sibling) and have lots of filters on my multiple IMAP inboxes. They run when new things appear in an inbox and move things as directed. Are you sure your filters will not work as you expect?

On 6/20/07 4:49 PM, "Edward Reid" wrote:
> I can't speak for the OP, but all of the above apply to some extent to me,
> except that I would probably still manage to function (degraded) without
> Eudora. But the biggest reason for me is future freedom: with Eudora, my
> email is stored in a standard format which I can transfer to many other
> email clients, in most cases without even a conversion process beyond
> line-end conversion. MS believes in proprietary storage formats. Don't
> fence me in.

For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the
Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.

On 6/21/07 11:20 AM, "Dan Frakes" <frakesmac.com> wrote:

>> I can't speak for the OP, but all of the above apply to some extent to me,
>> except that I would probably still manage to function (degraded) without
>> Eudora. But the biggest reason for me is future freedom: with Eudora, my
>> email is stored in a standard format which I can transfer to many other
>> email clients, in most cases without even a conversion process beyond
>> line-end conversion. MS believes in proprietary storage formats. Don't
>> fence me in.
>
> For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
> formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the
> Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.

There's also an export option that will export mail, contacts, events,
tasks, and notes for you in a .rge package which if you look inside, has
everything in standard formats, and even preserves your mail folder
structure. Unfortunately, that's not, as of yet, directly scriptable, but
it's a pretty easy thing to do.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Jun 21, 2007, at 12:20 PM, Dan Frakes wrote:

> For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
> formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage
> to the
> Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.

Fascinating, I had no idea it could do this.

Can you do similar tricks for exporting addresses & calendars?

It would be nice to have export options between the lock-in-ness of
the Entourage archive on one side, and the too-generic-ness of CSV on
the other side. Like, say, vCard/vCal.

Windows Address Book (the data store for Outlook Express contacts)
doesn't provide an obvious way to export vCard data, but if you just
select entries and drag them into a folder, you'll get one vCard per
record, which works splendidly.

I'd never managed to figure out how to get Entourage to do this kind
of thing, opting instead for clients with better &/or more obvious
import/export abilities. Still, I can picture scenarios where it
would be useful to do this (e.g. have Entourage load Classic Outlook
Express data, then turn around and move that somewhere else...).


--
Chris Devers

On 21-Jun-2007, at 09:18, John Welch wrote:
> Again, is IMAP absolutely incompatible with the way you work, and
> if you are
> "forced" into it, will you spend your days staring at the walls,
> useless in
> the main, or is this "I like POP" writ large?

Everytime I've run into people claiming that IMAP is incompatible
with how they work it's always come down to a basic misunderstanding
of how IMAP works. It seems all these people resisting it think it's
basically web-mail and that they will be stuck waiting for each
message to load every time they try to change from one to the next.

I've never had anyone want to go back to POP after I've actually sat
them down at a machine, shown them IMAP, and then sat them down at
another machine and shown them the same IMAP account.

On 6/20/07 4:56 PM, "A Mac User" <notsupplied.com> wrote:

> In response to allenwatson's posting -- "I'm a Microsoft MVP for Entourage. As
> such, I've never quite been able to understand people's attachment to Eudora
> ..." -- I emailed the following response:
>
I don't want to start a which-email-client-is-best battle; that wasn't my
intent. I simply thought it might be less trouble to consider switching. But
I do want to reply to a few things here that are either in error or
misleading.

> - multiple windows: this is a *huge* productivity improver ... the first thing
I notice with single-windowed
> email clients is a significant drop in productivity
>
I agree, actually; I usually run Entourage with at least four windows open.
I don't know where you get the idea it is a "single-window" email client!
Cmd-Option-1 will open a new browser...as often as you like. I usually have
Calendar in its own window, sometimes Tasks or Contacts. And I have scripts
that open custom views like ("Received today" or "Sent today") in separate
windows.

> - fast, reliable, predictable searches that do exactly what I expect them to
> do ... and, at least in OS X 10.4, anything to do with Spotlight doesn't fit
> that bill (especially the "what I expect" part!)
>
Agreed, though Entourage is getting better in this regard.

> - subtle (seemingly) little features like the "option-click" on an email's
> field to collect/highlight all the emails with the option-click'd attributes
>
Ah, I do have option-click envy, I confess. But Entourage's Custom Views are
a huge help; links between messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar events...

> MS appears to (still) avoid using the normal
> Apple-supplied interfaces for so much of its implementation ... seemingly
> thinking they can do better (and it's constantly shown that they can't).
>
That Entourage has chosen to make use of Spotlight and Apple's Sync Services
shows a different tendency.

> OK, so Eudora may not be a pretty as some of the other mail clients, but I'll
> take functional over pretty ... I need to get work done, not be dazzled by
> non-value-add eye-candy.
>
> Hope this helps your understanding.

Indeed, it does. But I think probably the chief difference that makes sense
to me of anyone's extremely strong attachment to a particular e-mail client,
any one, is the existence of a huge archive of old mail. I don't have that
with Entourage because, back in Claris Emailer days, I began using
AppleScripts to archive my mail into a FileMaker database. I use FMP's very
fast and highly flexible searching to zip through my archives, while keeping
Entourage limited, for the most part, to just mail from the last two weeks.
If my mail archive was locked into an Entourage database, I would be (a)
more nervous and (b) less inclined to be curious about other e-mail clients.

If I find one that offers me more than Entourage, and that lets me continue
to archive into FileMaker, I'll gladly jump ship. Eudora has reached its end
of life, although it may resurrect via Thunderbird (and probably should be
called Phoenix rather than Penelope)--I have my eye on that, to be honest.
So I think Eudora users should begin thinking about what they will move to
when Eudora no longer works for them. It will happen some day.
--

Allen Watson . Writer/Webmaster [ p. 503 .281 .0250 m. 503 .916 .9411
e. watson.allencomcast.net
homepage.mac.com/allen_a_watson/

At 16:46 on 18-06-2007, Allen Watson wrote:
> I'm a Microsoft MVP for Entourage. As such, I've never quite been able to
> understand people's attachment to Eudora,

There's a long list, but at a basic level, Entourage is horrible for
composing plain-text emails -- Eudora just has a much better text
editor. In Entourage, cmd+arrow keys/opt+arrow keys don't move around
the text as they should and for the recipient, emails end up hard
line-wrapped. I also find the quoting style and format awkward. But
there are many, many reasons that I prefer Eudora over Entourage (and
the fact that Entourage is an MS product is _not_ one of the
reasons). All the little features and the general approach add up to
big productivity benefits for me. I have to use Entourage at one of
my jobs, 2 days/week. Luckily I don't have to do much email for that
job!

_________________
=> Jolin

At 09:20 on 21-06-2007, Dan Frakes wrote:
> For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
> formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the
> Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.

This only works with 'local' mailboxes. IMAP mailboxes can't always
be dragged to the desktop. And if you have dozens of mailboxes, they
have to each be dragged out separately. Yes, it is possible to get
mail out of Entourage into a standard format, but it can be a hassle
and requires that Entourage is installed.

_________________
=> Jolin

At 4:49 PM -0700 6/20/07, davidson wrote:
>And, finally, in response to Bryan.Walls687:
>
>You hit the nail on the head when you wrote, "With IMAP, you need to
>purposely move mail from the server to a local account. You can set
>up rules, but it's a different way of thinking." And that
>dislocation, coupled with a decade's worth of stored messages, filed
>according to the way we work, is why the loss of POP would be so
>disruptive.

I've used Eudora as my primary mailer for around 1.5 decades, with
several hundred filters, and can relate my experience when I moved
from POP to IMAP (and then switching among several different IMAP
servers in the course of my own job as an IT slut):

Nothing broke.

I filter messages according to author. I have a couple hundred
filters, each with a matching local mailbox, and nearly all of those
filters execute with the manual CMD-J keyboard command. I read a
message, reply (if needed) and hit CMD-J. The message disappears
from the in and lands in mailbox for that author. (I also have a
handful of project-related mailboxes for things that don't fit this
model.)

When I moved my default personality from POP to IMAP, my inbox
changed from the local "In" mailbox to a server-side "Inbox". Big
whoop, the filters still worked -- those that execute on message
arrival still do their thing, as do those that execute on manual
CMD-J. I have several gigs of messages in local mailboxes which have
accumulated over the years. ("Hi I'm Andrew and I'm an email
packrat.")

If you filter messages now to local mailboxes, Eudora will continue
to do the same when you switch the personality to IMAP.

In fact, I have Eudora configured to give me a surprisingly POP-like
experience -- full message contents are downloaded to the local
cache, and IMAP delete operations are cached in RAM so that messages
appear to vanish -- just like in a POP configuration -- when I hit
the Delete key.

For additional IMAP goodness, my filters could (but currently don't,
I keep meaning to get around to it) first COPY messages to a
server-side IMAP mailbox and then MOVE them to a local mailbox. Then
I'd have all messages stored both local and online for remote
accessibility.

At 4:49 PM -0700 6/20/07, Edward Reid wrote:
>
>I can't speak for the OP, but all of the above apply to some extent to me,
>except that I would probably still manage to function (degraded) without
>Eudora. But the biggest reason for me is future freedom: with Eudora, my
>email is stored in a standard format which I can transfer to many other
>email clients, in most cases without even a conversion process beyond
>line-end conversion. MS believes in proprietary storage formats. Don't
>fence me in.

IMAP is the standard format which you seek. So long as any mail
server supports IMAP, a mail account's complete contents can be
migrated intact, with full contents and folder structure, to another
IMAP mail server. This is, in fact, how nearly all mail server
products handle migrations from whatever you had before. I have
many, many times used IMAP as the transport layer moving my
server-side mail between servers running: UW IMAP, cyrus, dovecot,
CommunigatePro, Exchange and lord knows what else.

--
Andrew Laurence atlaurenes.nacs.uci.edu
Network & Academic Computing Svcs. http://www.nacs.uci.edu/~atlauren/
UC Irvine

On 6/23/2007 12:25 PM, "Chris Devers" wrote:
>> For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other formats.
>> In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the Desktop, the
>> result is an MBOX-format text file.
>
> Fascinating, I had no idea it could do this.
>
> Can you do similar tricks for exporting addresses & calendars?

Dragging a contact to the Finder gives you a .vcf (vCard) file. Dragging a
calendar event gives you a .ics event file.

I am a long-time user of Eudora and still use it heavily on my home
machine. I use Entourage intensively on my work machine, and have
learned to make good use of its Project Center (not available in
Outlook). I also frequently use Mail on both those as well as another
machine. So I'm familiar with the abilities, strengths and
deficiencies of all. Oh, and I look in on and use pine from time to
time just to keep a hand in the command line mail.

Now that Qualcomm has abandoned me (Thunderbird does not yet compare
and I doubt it ever will) I no longer have particular loyalties
towards Eudora. Eudora's compatibility with future OSes will be a
factor when I think about purchasing though.


At 12:25 PM -0700 6/23/07, Allen Watson wrote:
> > - multiple windows: this is a *huge* productivity improver ...
>the first thing
>I notice with single-windowed
>> email clients is a significant drop in productivity
>>
>I agree, actually; I usually run Entourage with at least four windows open.
>I don't know where you get the idea it is a "single-window" email client!

It is true that Entourage will keep main windows (mail, calendar,
etc.) open and remember to reopen those windows after quitting and
restarting. But if individual messages (or events, tasks, etc) are
open it will not remember to reopen them after quit and restart, or
more accurately, after crash and restart.

This means that when I have 10 or 12 message windows open and it
crashes (Entourage seems to slow down noticeably when multiple
windows are open*), most of the open windows will not reopen for me
on restart. This is in marked contrast to Eudora in which I can keep
10, 15, 20 or more windows open - whether they be mailboxes or
individual messages. I use those open windows as a sort of "to do"
list of emails I have to act on.

Don't misinterpret my minor gripe though: Entourage has functionality
that makes it significantly superior to Eudora in the corporate
environment, and most especially in a corporate Exchange Server
environment. It handles both creating and accepting meeting
invitations. It will also schedule large blocks of your time as
"Busy" so others cannot fill your thinking and working time with
meetings. They can't see what you schedule in the blocked-out time
unless they are delegates of your calendar with the proper
permissions. Again, this is possible and easy in Entourage and
completely impossible in Eudora.

But the limited capacity for multiple windows, especially in
comparison to Eudora for Eudora users, is fairly annoying.
Furthermore, the lack of adequate database repair capacity and the
damage done to a database when initiating a "database repair" make
one long for the simplicity of Eudora.

However, I would advise the original poster to be objective and test
Entourage with numerous tasks, especially focusing on calendaring.

>Indeed, it does. But I think probably the chief difference that makes sense
>to me of anyone's extremely strong attachment to a particular e-mail client,
>any one, is the existence of a huge archive of old mail. I don't have that
>with Entourage because, back in Claris Emailer days, I began using
>AppleScripts to archive my mail into a FileMaker database. I use FMP's very

That being said, I would also advise to not even bother attempting to
import Eudora mail into Entourage and expect an acceptable import.
Many messages will be munged. If you end up using Entourage going
forward, just keep your Eudora application and mail folders intact as
a searchable archive. (You can do the import, but you may see about
10% munged records. It will mostly work, but I don't include "mostly"
as a successful outcome with this operation.)

*The tendency for Entourage to slow down when multiple windows are
open begins at around 8-10 windows, and by 20 it is seriously slowed
and wont to crash unpredictably.

On 23-Jun-2007, at 22:46, dano wrote:
> That being said, I would also advise to not even bother attempting to
> import Eudora mail into Entourage and expect an acceptable import.
> Many messages will be munged.

Well, to be fair, Eudora munges the messages it stores. It rewrites
attachment emails, adds its personality headers, and ... erm, seems
it did something else having to do with the date format? I forget.

I had a LOT of issue migrating from Eudora and had to write some
custom procmail recipes to wend up with mbox files that I could throw
at Mail.app (Back in 10.1 when it did "unix mail") and mutt.

Finally I ended up with a mostly clean mailspool, but devoid of all
attachments since it simply wasn't worth trying to reconstruct those.

Course, that was before Eudora did IMAP (or at least did IMAP at all
reliably, it was horribly buggy when first added). Now, I would just
copy all the mail to the IMAP server, quit Eudora, and open up the
new client.

At 09:20 06/21/07 -0700, Dan Frakes wrote:
>For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
>formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the
>Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.

But I'm still dependent on Entourage to get my mail out of Entourage.
That's better than mailers that won't help me got it out at all. But I can
get my mail out of Eudora with no help from Eudora. With some caveats,
particularly related to attachments and outgoing mail, as others have noted.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 6/29/07 09:21 AM, "Edward Reid" <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

>> For the record, you can easily transfer mail from Entourage to other
>> formats. In fact, if you drag a folder of messages from Entourage to the
>> Desktop, the result is an MBOX-format text file.
>
> But I'm still dependent on Entourage to get my mail out of Entourage.
> That's better than mailers that won't help me got it out at all. But I can
> get my mail out of Eudora with no help from Eudora. With some caveats,
> particularly related to attachments and outgoing mail, as others have noted.

Um...if you have Entourage, why is this a problem? If you're going to start
up with databases as a concept being a problem, then I suggest you stop
computing, and stop using any service that involves a computer, because the
computing world runs on databases. If it's the Entourage database that
bothers you, then why use a product you dislike?

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

> It is true that Entourage will keep main windows (mail, calendar,
> etc.) open and remember to reopen those windows after quitting and
> restarting. But if individual messages (or events, tasks, etc) are
> open it will not remember to reopen them after quit and restart, or
> more accurately, after crash and restart.
>
> This means that when I have 10 or 12 message windows open and it
> crashes (Entourage seems to slow down noticeably when multiple
> windows are open*), most of the open windows will not reopen for me
> on restart. This is in marked contrast to Eudora in which I can keep
> 10, 15, 20 or more windows open - whether they be mailboxes or
> individual messages. I use those open windows as a sort of "to do"
> list of emails I have to act on.
>
> *The tendency for Entourage to slow down when multiple windows are
> open begins at around 8-10 windows, and by 20 it is seriously slowed
> and wont to crash unpredictably.

I think having at least an option to re-open message windows that were open
after a crash or quit is a good suggestion, and I've made it to Microsoft.

However, for working with messages in Entourage as it exists today, I would
suggest one of two approaches rather than leaving the message windows open,
since that obviously isn't working for you due to a weakness in Entourage:

1. Flag the message you want to work on later. ⌘-` will do it from the
keyboard if you prefer not to mouse to the menu or message header. Then, use
a custom view set to find all flagged messages when you are ready to work
through them. Unflag them (⌘-opt-`) as you complete them.

2. Use the AppleScript provided in the Script menu, "Create Task from
Message" with the shortcut of Ctrl-T, to create a Task linked to the
message. Then, switch to the Task List (⌘-5) and work down the list there,
using the links menu to open the related message and checking each task off
after you have processed the linked message.
--
Microsoft MVP for Entourage/OE/Word (MVPs are volunteers)
Allen Watson <AllenWmvps.org> Entourage FAQ site:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
AppleScripts for Outlook Express and Entourage:
 <http://homepage.mac.com/allen_a_watson/FileSharing3.html>
Entourage Help Pages: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>

[OK, we're starting to digress, so let's shut it down... -Adam]

On Jul 2, 2007, at 1:40 PM, John Welch wrote:

> Um...if you have Entourage, why is this a problem?

Early versions of Entourage, as with Emailer before it--mostly the
same developers--tended to corrupt the database. Particularly on Mac
OS 9 and below and early Mac OS X. Early MailSmith tended to corrupt
its database. Early Microsoft Exchange tended to corrupt its mail
storage.

After enough horror stories, one becomes concerned.

Also, databases and incremental backups by consumer-type programs
tend to conflict. (There are, of course, solutions at the Data
Center level.)

That said, neither Emailer nor Entourage has ever corrupted *my* mail
database. Mailsmith did, but that was a very early version, and I
know it doesn't now.

   --John

[OK, no more on Entourage database issues... -Adam]

At 13:40 07/02/07 -0700, John Welch wrote:
>Um...if you have Entourage, why is this a problem?

If Entourage stops working, license expires, I simply find myself with only
backups and no access to a computer with Entourage installed ... it's not
the biggest problem around, no, but it's a reason.

>If you're going to start up with databases as a concept being a problem,
>then I suggest you stop computing, and stop using any service that
>involves a computer, because the computing world runs on databases.

Most of them use standard DB packages. What does Entourage use? If its
database is managed by software which would be installed anyway and I can
read the DB without Entourage itself, then that's indeed a mitigating factor.

>If it's the Entourage database that bothers you, then why use a product
>you dislike?

I don't. I thought that was obvious. It was someone else who asked why. I
answered. Please read the thread, not just a single response.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 7/3/07 10:07 AM, "Edward Reid" <edwardpaleo.org> wrote:

>> Um...if you have Entourage, why is this a problem?
>
> If Entourage stops working, license expires, I simply find myself with only
> backups and no access to a computer with Entourage installed ... it's not
> the biggest problem around, no, but it's a reason.

The entourage license doesn't "expire". MacBU != Rest of MS stupidity. If
E'rage stops working, then you get it working again.

>
>> If you're going to start up with databases as a concept being a problem,
>> then I suggest you stop computing, and stop using any service that
>> involves a computer, because the computing world runs on databases.
>
> Most of them use standard DB packages. What does Entourage use? If its
> database is managed by software which would be installed anyway and I can
> read the DB without Entourage itself, then that's indeed a mitigating factor.

There's no such thing as "standard". Everyone uses various standards to
access a database, but there's no "standard" for db layout. Try getting to
an Oracle database without tools that know how to read Oracle databases or
use Oracle middleware. Good luck with that. Same thing with all the others.
You either have tools that know how to handle that layout, or you don't get
to the data.

If you want to get to 95% of non-email attachment data, tell E'rage to use
Spotlight, and read those XML files. Spotlight grabs a ton of data, with the
caveat that any HTML/Rich formatting is gone, and it doesn't do attachments.

If you want to backup Notes, Tasks, Events, and Contacts, then enable Sync
Services, and all that E'rage data is replicated to other Sync Services
application, (and vice-versa).

If you want better email backups, use IMAP, and then you're free of worrying
about clients.

This idea that you have to directly read the database to back up E'rage is
not nearly as correct as people want to think.

>
>> If it's the Entourage database that bothers you, then why use a product
>> you dislike?
>
> I don't. I thought that was obvious. It was someone else who asked why. I
> answered. Please read the thread, not just a single response.

Again, every problem you list is a problem for every database. If that
concept bothers you that much, modern computing is going to be a very scary
place for you.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

> I want to have to have two mailbox windows open at the same time,
> side by side, without covering the entire width of my monitor.
> Entourage doesn't let me do that, regardless of the size of my
> screen. Rather, it's minimum mailbox window size is set to be some
> fraction of my screen width. Dumb, dumb, dumb. (pet peeve, pet peeve,
> pet peeve.)

Touché. I never noticed, actually, but you are correct. The browser window
is set to a minimum width that is >50% of the window width. But I've
discovered another kind of window that might achieve part of what you want.
Create a custom view, or one each for several folders you want open in
multiple windows. (Advanced search, Folder is..., then save as Custom View).
Here is the trick: normally, a custom view will open in the current browser
window. To force it to open in its own special window:

1. Create an AppleScript to open it:

    tell application "Microsoft Entourage" to open custom view "Inbox"

Or whatever you called your custom view. Create a script for each CV, or one
script that offers you a choice of CVs (you could use the "choose from list"
command, like this:

    tell application "microsoft entourage" to open custom view (item 1 of
(choose from list {"Inbox","Fred","Office Stuff"}))

2. Store the script(s) in Entourage Script Menu Items.

3. In Entourage, use Cmd-7 to bring the Progress window foreward (the
general idea is to have a window forward that IS NOT a browser window, and
therefore cannot display a CV) .

4. Run the script to open the custom view. Voilà! A window opens with a list
of the folder, but it isn't a browser window. You can resize it to your
heart's content, and customize what columns it displays.

I realize that's a hell of a lot of trouble to go to make Entourage do what
it ought to do by itself. But I thought maybe someone would find it useful
or interesting. I use these stand-alone windows all the time, more than I
use the normal browser windows.