My first point of support: MSN Support on Microsoft.com and this link also

If you go over the support page, numerous solutions are listed down. I’ll list down the one’s which worked for me.

• MSN Web Messenger worked well as a back-up
• Adium X didn’t worked for MSN on my end
• Ebuddy worked well but kept on disconnecting

The following is the solution I applied and it has worked out for me.

• Remove MSN Messenger from Applications folder
• Delete your preferences, then try to setup Messenger and sign-in again
  > *All preferences are located in your ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft folder
  > * com.microsoft.Messenger.plist
  > * com.microsoft.MessengerDaemon.plist
  > * Microsoft Messenger User Cache
  > * Microsoft Messenger User Cache.plist
• Get hold of latest MSN Messenger from Microsoft site and install it
• Don’t select “save your password”

I hope it works out for other people out there too. The support pages I mentioned above were real help, please consult them.

You have switched to Mac and everything Apple, congrates on that! Whats holding you back from using the native email client? Lets be honest, we have been using outlook for song long that it has just become first choice to opt Entourage and MS products. I was exposed to Entourage problems and perils while upgrading to MS Office for Mac 2008 Service Pack 1 (12.1.0)

Entourage stores its data in One big DB file, which can cause the following problem:

• A single file is prone to corruption and can be a big pain
• Not Time Machine friendly, meaning every time you backup, the complete file has to be updated

I didn’t had any other big problem with Entourage, honestly, but haven’t ever used many of the features like Projects, which seemed very fancy initially. The one big problem I had with Entourage and underlying Mac apps like ICal & Address Book, is multiple records entry. And this keeps on growing and growing. Entourage is one big, heavy app., which includes Email, Calender and Address Book under its thick interface. Considering the problems I faced during the upgrade, I promised myself to look at the alternatives and realized that Apple already has given a very neat, light and efficient program for us all – Apple Mail 3.0. We are already familiar with ICal & Address Book; and familiar with their feature set. Apple Mail 3.0 or more often referred to as Leopard Mail, also sports a similar interface like ICal and Address Book. Frankly, it can be considered as Lamborghini of Email clients.

Switching Concerns:

Before any major upgrade or planned move, as always, I always advise a comprehensive “backup“. I couldn’t emphasis it more. Mail imports your email from Entourage like a breeze, no sweat there. You have to setup the email accounts on your own. Mac documentation and help is very comprehensive in this regard. I have tried all type account setups e.g, POP3, IMAP, SSL etc. and all worked like a charm. Google Mail was also very Mail Happy (I had faced some issues with Entourage). So Transfer and mail setup complete!

Mail Features:

Email:

Just Awesome. Reading, Writing and Replying is a breeze. I just love the light-weight and easy to use and eyecandy look while effectively responding to my mail needs

Data Detectors:

Emails in that contain a date, phone number, or a contact (usually in email signature) are highlighted with a drop down menu. Click and select “Create New Contact,” and Data Detectors will select as much as it can from the email; e.g., name, mailing address, email address, phone & fax, and copy them into a contact entry ready for your editing.

Data Detectors also works awesomely great with time and date entries, offering to schedule an event with iCal.

Notes:

Notes are HTML scratchpad emails with rich text, hyperlinks, and graphics or file attachments capability. They work as email drafts, and can be linked to To Do reminders, so a simple event can bring up detailed outline contained in a Note.

RSS Feed Reader

Honestly, I would continue to use Google Reader for my feeds. Though, its be default getting Apple Feeds and presenting them very nicely.

Stationary:

A feature which is very ilifesque. Looks very good, works very good and easily configurable – but not my cup of tea, yet!

Initially, I kept my mailbox on Pop3 and leave on server settings and kept using both clients (Entourage & Mail) for a week. Now, I’m only using Mail and loving it! My favorite feature is “Quick View” within the mail to look at CVs (I’m a recruiter!) Its saves soooooo much time. In pre-Mail days, double-clicking on a doc would open up it in relevant doc (word for .doc files, preview for .pdf etc.), now just click in Quick View and you can easily look at the files.

The other most important feature of Mail and basically Entourage killer is the storing mechanism Mail uses to store data. Rather then storing all data in 1 single large DB file, which is very Time Machine friendly.

Image Credit: Apple Inc.

I like arial as a standard email font. I think it is widely recognized as a standard in corporate email exchange. So you would go to your “Preferences” and make “Message Font” to Arial. Sounds simple! Now, create New Message and type in any message and send it to any email account you can access on MS Outlook. You will be surprised that message body text will be in “Times New Roman”. Select any font in “Preferences > Fonts & Colors” but at the other end, the font you will see is “Times New Roman”. One solution to this problem is to select any font other than Arial in “Pref > F & C” panel and when you are writing an email, manually select the text and make it Arial. This works! Another solution to this problem is to create a simple Signature from “Pref > Signatures” and leave 1 or 2 lines above your actual text and make the signature in Arial (i.e. open Fonts and Colors panel, select all and make the font Arial). So now when you are writing a New Message, the first line would be whatever font you have selected in “Pref > F & C”, the second would be Arial. Note: Keep the Fonts panel open to see the font change from top line to signature-based line. This serves the purpose for people who would be using the standard text based signature. I’m not one of them, so I had one other problem to take care of before resting. I learnt about the solutions and some other issues from this Discussion on Apple support site.

Signatures:

I switched from Windows/Outlook to Mac/Entourge, therefore it wouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m used to HTML based signatures. I really loved the control I had over my signatures. I was amazed to see lack of signature-friendly features in Mail. Apple, please realize, we mare mortals like to fancy HTML/colored/logo-rich signatures. Just call it, keeping in sync with our window-outlook-using-colleagues. But rest assured there is a solution, though quite a tedious one. Already people have written great stuff on it like All Forces, Paradigm Reborn and Gathering in Light. I’ll summerize the method.

• Create HTML signature in your fav. program, delete all irrelevant code just keep <table>…</table> or <div> .. </div> as your prefer.Usual code to delete Html, Head, body etc. tags.
• Call all images from relative paths, Mail doesn’t support EMBED feature
• Create a fake signature using Mail > Preferences > Signatures.
• The location if this signature is ~/Library/Mail/Signatures/C0D…E67.webarchive
• In Safari Browser, open the signature html file you’ve created and “Save As” webarchive
• Replace your webarchive file with the original signature retaining later’s file name something like CoD…E67.webarchive
• Restart Mail and associate the signature with the email account you want to associate it with
• Enjoy!

The signature I’m using is resolving both my Font and Signature issues. I’ve written “Regards” in the start of my signature in Arial font and whenever I have to write a message, I start writing replacing it. Issue resolved but I would really like folks at Apple to realize this as an issue and do something simpler for us. As I reference I’m placing my Signature file on the web for reference.