RE: [TCLUG:14915] Re: Help! Help! Save me from M$ Exchange!

[nryberg@uspsoig.gov]

Not to get too off topic (my apologies to the more devoted of Linux users)
but you don't need Outlook to use Exchange.  It's certainly easier to use
Outlook, but there are SDK's for developing Visual Basic (easily reachable
in Excel's macro code) connections to Exchange.  I've fought the Exchange
battle myself, so I'm not discounting your complaint - it can be a royal
pain in the rear.

In my personal experience, Excel, Outlook and all the other Office products
seem to play pretty well together.  The Visual Basic macro system has a
nifty autocomplete feature for objects that I think would be really nice in
Linux - eg. if you type in an object name, then ".", it shows a drop down
box with all of the legal extensions from that object.

To bring it back to the Linux world - I believe that this is precisely where
KDE/Gnome are headed with an integrated environment where any application
can talk to any other application.


>I don't know from OpenMail, but I do know from bitter
>experience that Exchange doesn't even work & play well
>with other M$FT Office products. We have an internal
>billing process that relies largely on an Excel
>spreadsheet, which (all other things being equal) should
>e-mail itself when the users are done filling in the data.

>Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Exchange servers, 
>just Outlook...so I ask you, if Exchange doesn't even 
>work with its own cousins, how could OpenMail possibly
>be any worse?

>Kevin Trainor