Switched from Outlook to Apple Mail/iCal/Address Book

I've been a longtime Outlook user. Never on Exchange, just single-user, carefully nurturing my enlarging pst file through years of Windows and MS Office upgrades, and various mobile devices/desktops/laptops. So when I made the switch to Mac 3 months ago, I carefully ported my pst to Office for Mac 2011, got Outlook doing email, and got my iPad and BlackBerry syncing to Outlook 2011.

Today when I finally got Apple Mail configured for my email account, it dawned on me that I no longer needed Outlook. With much thought and some trepidation, I turned off iSync in Outlook. Of course the Apple apps, iPad and BlackBerry could care less -- they were already syncing to each other, and did not notice that Outlook was offline. In fact they were syncing much faster, especially the BlackBerry. The sync between Outlook and Apple Mail/iCal/Address Book was an inefficient redundancy.

I prefer working with the three Apple apps (email, calendar, addresses) open in three different windows. In Outlook, I could only see one of those three functions at a time. The Apple apps are integrated enough for me.

So, with a small ceremony witnessed only by myself and one of the family cats (nobody else cared), I archived Outlook's data to the external hard drive, and then removed Outlook from the Dock.

The 3 Apple apps sport my years of electronic email, calendar data and addresses because I used Outlook for Mac to import them from the Windows pst file. I have not checked to see if there is an alternative way to import Windows Outlook data directly into the Apple apps. If there is, and if I had understood all this 3 months ago, I would not have purchased the more expensive version of MS Office for Mac that contains Outlook.

You mileage will vary.

The 3 Apple apps sport my years of electronic email, calendar data and addresses because I used Outlook for Mac to import them from the Windows pst file. I have not checked to see if there is an alternative way to import Windows Outlook data directly into the Apple apps. If there is, and if I had understood all this 3 months ago, I would not have purchased the more expensive version of MS Office for Mac that contains Outlook.

Click to expand...

Actually there is but it's not free. It's an app called O2M from Little Machines ($12.95).

Hi, I use Outlook at work in my desktop and have it linked to my iPhone. However I would like to populate my iMac contacts and calendar with the same information. Is there a way of doing so? Thanks.

Sounds like you want to sync the data on your iPhone to your iMac's Apple apps? I am still learning MacOS, but can't one do that using iTunes?

Yes I wan the information on my iPhone (from the work PC) to populate the Calendar and Tasks in the iMac. Thanks.

I have done much the same (although I DO use hosted Exchange), my only gripe so far is that I much prefer the task handling in Outlook compared to iCal. I am considering experimenting with some to-do list apps though in place of it.