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 notifications means these alerts work all the time, even when no Office X

programs are running. This is a big improvement over Office 2001, where your re-

minders popped up only when an Office program was running. (Of course, you can

disable Office Notifications any time, if you don’t want to be interrupted during an

air guitar solo or while keeping earth safe for humanity.)

Tip: If you use Microsoft’s MSN Messenger and Passport services, Office Notifications can also tie in

Microsoft’s .NET Alerts. For instance, a shipping company might use .NET Alerts to provide status updates

on a package, a bank might notify you of deposits to your account, or an auction site might let you know

that an item you’ve always coveted is up for sale.

You can’t manage .NET Alerts within Entourage. Typically, you sign up for (and configure) .NET services via

a service provider’s Web site and set your contact preferences using Microsoft Passport. However, you do

not need MSN Messenger or a Passport to use Office Notifications, as described here.

The Notifications Window

When a reminder, task, or item you’ve flagged for follow-up comes due, the Office

Notifications window appears in front of any other programs, a sound plays, and

the name of the item appears. If more than one item is due, the Office Notifications

window lists them all. Figure 9-18 shows three different kinds of notifications: a

reminder, a Microsoft Word document flagged for follow-up, and a task set up in

Entourage. The Office Notifications window also has three buttons across the bot-

Tasks