Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Synchronization

For those who believe that organization is the key to life—those who believe that if they can just get all those meetings, reports, and schedules into one all-encompassing database that life will suddenly become a bowl of cherries—Entourage offers hope. By synchronizing with your Palm, Blackberry, cell phone, or iPod, you can take part of your Entourage database with you when you’re forced to stray from the comfort of your computer. If you actually enjoy being away from computing devices no matter how pocketable, there’s always paper, pencils, and that Day-Timer that’s been keeping you on track since the 70s. But at least consider the possibilities Entourage offers. One of the most exciting aspects of Entourage is its ability to synchronize the information in its Calendar, Address Book, Notes, and Tasks with your handheld so that you can carry the Mac-based details of your life around in your pocket. Every time you make a change to this information, either on the handheld or Mac, the next synchronization session updates both machines so that they contain the identical information.

In Mac OS X version 10.4.3, Apple debuted Sync Services, a centralized synchronization scheme that lets your Entourage calendar and Address Book, Apple Address Book, iCal, as well as your .Mac account (if you have one) and your cell phone, iPod, or Palm all synchronize to a single unified database. This master Sync Services database—which actually bears the somewhat Orwellian official name ...