Entourage Sound Sets

We use Entourage 2008 at work, and our desks are arranged in the typical cubicle environment, so I decided to customize my Entourage sounds to make it easier to know when it’s my email arriving and not one of the other Mac users sitting around me. From what I’ve read, the same sound set format works for Outlook 2011 for Mac.

To use the new sound sets:

1) Download and unzip the sound set(s).
2) Move the folder(s) that end in “.eragesoundset” to the Entourage Sound Sets folder located at:
      Documents / Microsoft User Data / Entourage Sound Sets
3) Open Preferences in Entourage: Entourage menu > Preferences…
4) Select Notifications in the left column.
5) Select the name of your new sound set in the bottom drop-down list.

Download the Sound Sets:

HomestarRunner
LittleBritain
MacMailApp
R2D2
StarTrek
StarWars
SuperMarioBros
SuperMarioWorld
Water
ZeldaOcarina

I got several of these sound sets from http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=cats&cat_id=3 which are formatted to work with another application, Adium. A few simple modifications allow you to use the same sound sets with Entourage.

First, edit the folder name to end with “.eragesoundset” instead of “.AdiumSoundset”. Then, place a copy of the “soundset.plist” file from one of my Entourage sound sets into your new sound set folder. Next, edit the sound file names in the .plist file to match the names of the 6 sounds you want to use. For example, the last sound listed in the .plist file is the Welcome sound that plays when you first launch Entourage. Edit the value to match the name of the sound file sitting in the sound set folder that you want to use. You can use any text editor to edit the .plist file if it doesn’t open automatically with the Property List Editor app.

All of these sound file formats work (possible others too): .aif .wav .mp3 .m4a You can even use more than one sound format within the same sound set. I did find, however, that some of the sounds that I got from the Adium sound sets caused problems, preventing Entourage from accepting the sound set. To get around those problems, I either selected a different sound, or I reformatted the sound as an .aif using Garageband (Share > Export Song to Disk… and uncheck the Compress box).

These websites helped me figure out how to make the sound set files:

http://blog.mikefullerton.com/2008/04/22/entourage-sound-sets/

http://fuzzyco.com/news/geekery/converting_or_creating_sound_sets_for_entourage_2008.html

1 Comment

• 

  By christien, April 26, 2012 @ 6:52 am

  I like to confirm: It works for Outlook 2011 for Mac!

  Thanks!
  Christien

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