Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 9: entourage calendar and tasks 397

you have a task’s window open, you can create a link with the click of a Links button,

which opens the Links window. If you use the Links button as a menu, your choices

let you link that task either to an existing Entourage item or to a new one that’s

created on the spot.

Office Notifications

After you’ve set up a reminder for an appointment or task in Entourage (or via the

Flag for Follow Up feature in any Office X program), Office X will display handy on-

screen alerts when your items come due. You can instruct these alerts to go away or

to come back later, or you can use them for quick access to appropriate appoint-

ments, documents, or messages.

Office X uses a small add-on program called Office Notifications to perform the

alerting. (It’s in the Microsoft Office X→Office folder, if you’re curious.) When an

alert comes due, Office Notifications appears as a separate item in the Mac OS X

Dock. When you’ve dealt with any pending items, Office Notifications vanishes, re-

appearing when it’s time for the next reminder or follow-up.

It might sound complicated to deal with yet another program to handle alerts and

notifications, but Office Notifications is straightforward. First, you can manage ev-

erything about alerts and notifications within Entourage, so you don’t really feel

like you’re using a separate program. Second, using a separate tiny program to handle

alerts and ...