Recently, we've had a rash of complaints from certified staff members whose Internet Service Provider is Comcast about their inability to access their District 21 email via Entourage 2008 on their Staff MacBook. Typically, these staff members have received a message like that pictured below:


We know that this error is real and is taking place, but we have been unable to consistently replicate. Nothing has changed on our end in regard to our District 21 Exchange server, firewall configuration, or other technical structure that should be causing this. We believe that the issue is on Comcast's end, but in order to help resolve this, staff members are asked to do the following when they see this dialog box while working at home with a Comcast connection:

• Record the specific date and time that this took place
• Open Safari and try to navigate to http://webmail.ccsd21.org
• Email helpdesk@net56.com and tell them exactly when this took place and whether or not you were able to access Exchange Webmail at http://webmail.ccsd21.org
• If you were unable to access Exchange Webmail, too, you might also choose to call Comcast and report the issue to them.

Thank you for your assistance in collecting data to track down this problem.

Tags: Exchange, Entourage 2008, Staff MacBook

Entourage mail program keeps a list of recent e-mail addresses from people you have corresponded with. While this can save time typing out the full address, it’s annoying when the recently used address turns out to be wrong.

If you want to remove that incorrect entry from the recently used list in Entourage 2008:

• Create a new message and start typing the address you want to remove.
• When the pop-up menu of suggested addresses appears, select the incorrect one.
• Hold down the Control key and click on the address.
• Choose the Add to Address Book from the menu to create a new contact. (Yes! You’re actually going to create an incorrect address first!)

Now that you’ve created a contact file with the incorrect address:

• Select the incorrect contact from your Contacts list, go to the Edit menu, and choose Delete Contact.
• Once you delete the contact and discard the blank message you created, the entry should disappear from the Recent Addresses list.

If you want to wipe out all the addresses on the entire Recent Addresses list,

• Go to the Entourage menu and choose Preferences.
• On the left side of the Preferences box, under the Mail & News Preferences, click on the Compose line.
• On the right side of the Preferences box, in the Recent Addresses area, click on the Clear List button.

Tags: Exchange, Entourage 2008

“Our servers should be younger than our Kindergarteners.”

This adage is one that school districts aspire to achieve and maintain.

In our quest to provide the best possible tools for students and staff members within our existing resources, we have moved to the Enterprise-class Microsoft Exchange email, calendar, contacts productivity server. Rather than move everyone in a single, sweeping, over-the-weekend transition is as often-the-case with such a change, we have taken a different approach. We have slowly moved groups of people over during the course of the last three years. On Friday, August 27th, the last current CommuniGate user will be moved to Exchange (and celebrations will ensue throughout District 21)!!!

The CommuniGate server will be shutdown this coming Sunday evening, August 29th, after 7.00 PM. After that time, messages on CommuniGate will no longer be available to be retrieved. Most staff have had at least three months to clear these messages from the CommuniGate server in the event that they wanted to retain the messages.




From Listservs to Groups
With this move, we are also in the process of enabling the groups in Active Directory as Mail Groups. These function a little differently than listservs.

First, Active Directory is designed to control most functions within our school district related to computers for each student and staff member. It provides a map for each individual’s electronic life in CCSD21, connecting you with your files, your email, etc. When someone is hired, she is put in to Active Directory, and when she leaves CCSD21, she is taken out, and all of those permissions vanish with her!

Another feature of Active Directory is that we can make groups, and then, we can use that same group for multiple purposes. For example, each school has a Staff group, and that group has permissions on the school-wide staff wiki on the teams.ccsd21.org server and that group will now also be the school’s staff email group.

So, what do you need to know in order to use the new email groups?

• Composing an email--To send an email to the entire staff, just do what you’ve done in the past--send an email to the group. For example, in the screenshot below, I am sending an email to the iTech and Principals groups. If I wanted to send one to the staff at London, I would enter london_staff in the TO line of my email. Then, everyone in the London Staff group in Active Directory would receive the email.
• Replying to an email--This is one of the biggest changes from a listserv. Now, when you hit reply to a message that was sent to the entire group, it will only be received by the original sender of the email, not by the whole group. The benefit is that this eliminates the possibility of accidentally sending an unintended response to everyone, as so often happens! If you want everyone to see your response, you simply hit “Reply to All” instead of “Reply”.

With this change, all of the new teachers, who were only included in Exchange and never entered in to CommuniGate will start receiving school staff emails. So, beginning next week, the staff email group (Remember, it’s not a listserv anymore!) for each school should be complete.

Finally, as with all of the users in Active Directory, the group names are searchable in Entourage 2008, Outlook 2007 and 2010, and Outlook Web App, so you can look up a group if you don’t know its name. To make this transition as easy as possible, nearly all group names match those that were previously used in CommuniGate!

Tags: Staff MacBook, CommuniGate, Exchange, Entourage 2008, Webmail

Changing Default Font
In Entourage 2008, you can change your default font and font size, however, you cannot change the default color. The default color will always remain black.

To change the default font style, first open Entourage, and then, under Entourage in the menu bar at the top of the screen, choose Preferences.


Then, in Preferences, choose Fonts from the column on the left side.


On the right-hand side, you can choose how to set different parts of your message to different font sizes and styles by using the drop-down menus. Once you are done, hit OK.


Manually Changing Fonts for Individual Emails
You can change the color, size, and style of the font for individual emails manually. To do so, first open a new email in Entourage and enter in the usual information (recipient, subject, etc..) for composing an email. Then, select the new font color, size, and style you would like to use from the menus, just like you would in a word processing document.

Once you begin typing you will see how the new font looks. When you are done with the content of the message, hit Send. Your next email will go back to your default settings.


When choosing fonts, colors, and styles, please remember that your text communicates voice and tone in an email, so when choosing to use bold characters, all uppercase letters, and/or specific colors, you are communicating non-verbal cues via email. Choose carefully!

Tags: Staff MacBook, Entourage 2008, Exchange

If you are using Entourage 2008 from home, when you begin to enter an email address, Entourage 2008 will remember the email addresses of people you’ve recently emailed or who have recently emailed you as well as the users that will pop up from Active Directory. Of course, if you’d like, you could add anyone in as a contact (See Atomic Learning). Then it will be stored in Entourage 2008 and on your computer, and it will sync to your Exchange account. Remember, though, that once everyone is switched to Exchange/Entourage, everyone’s default email address will be firstname.lastname@ccsd21.org.

If/when you use Outlook Web App (OWA/Exchange Webmail) feature through your web browser, only the users that you’ve written to before will be stored.

Tags: Entourage 2008, Exchange