Microsoft Entourage 2004
Spinning Colored Wheel When Composing E-mail
Microsoft Entourage 2004 is the email, calendar and contact collaboration application for customers with Apple Macintosh computers. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Why is colored wheel frequently spinning when I compose a message?
The program seems to pause and any written text is not displayed until the wheel has stopped.
This behavior is observed with Exchange accounts containing a high number of messages, contacts and calendar items. Degrading performance is noted when accounts exceed 2000 or more items.
Solution: Reduce and maintain item counts to 2000 or less. Create Personal Folders to move messages off the server.
How can I see the number of items in my account?
Item counts for each folder appear in the lower left corner of Microsoft Entourage. Click through each folder and total the items for each.
What is my mailbox quota?
Exchange mailbox quotas are set for 250 MB. Messages in the Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, Deleted Items, Contact and Calendar all count towards the quota.
Note: The performance issue is not directly related to maintaining large attachments in the account, only the total items in the folders.
How can I tell when I’m close to reaching the limit?
Entourage 2004 SP2 provides the ability to view your account quota. Hold the Control key while clicking the Exchange account in the folder list and choose Folder Properties from the pop up window.
Click the Storage tab to view folder sizes.
Open the Entourage menu to About Entourage and check for version 11.3.0. If you see anything less, download the update from within Entourage, at http://www.mactopia.com, or contact the Technology HelpDesk for technical assistance at 677-2964.