Entourage failure, my account and mailboxes disappeared

L

leighrow

Registered
Hi, I woke up to a nightmare this morning....opened entourage and it appeared as newly opened, unset-up. All my mails etc had gone. This happened overnight. Has anyone had this problem wth entourage? help
 
Stop now and do these steps.

1. Repair Permissions on your Mac.

2. Then reboot.

3. Launch Entourage while holding down the 'option' key and then "Rebuild the Database".

4. Cross your fingers while the Entourage database rebuilds and hope this fixes this.


Good Luck.
 
hi, thanks very much but i ended up having to re-import all my old mail folders from the pc to mac swap over (losing everything from the last 8 weeks!!) and starting from scratch. My main identity had gone and rebuild did not help...have since been told how to save a regular backup of entourage by going into Microsoft User Data/User and copying the Main Identity file. Very good to know. Microsoft have no idea why this happened, although I found a virus !! a couple of days ago - Phishing Bank 626 - could that have had something to do with it? I thought it was very rare to get viruses on mac...?

All in all, not a happy day.
 
This makes no sense. I've seldom in many, many years on the Mac seen files disappear all by themselves. Of course, I'm not on Intel, but when you have the heart to, I hope you'll pursue what might have happened. Sure, backups are a great idea - but is Entourage capable of eating it's own database? I think not. Had you done anything "funny" the night before? May we have an expert step in here?

BTW, Entourage will happily start up ignorant of its user db, just makes a fresh one with no effect on the one it can't find ... in other words, it doesn't even bother to hunt.
 
I was working on Entourage quite happily before trying to shut it down. The application stopped responding so I had to force quit and then I shut my machine down. I was astonished, then horrified, then hopping mad when I found the main identity database was gone. I've done all the usual things but to no avail. I desperately need some of this information and have no backup of the latest stuff.
 
Forgive me if this is too painfully obvious, but since Entourage will make a new database/user at start-up if it can't find the old one ... it might appear that your database is gone when in fact, you just need to find it and repoint the app there. I would do that, once I found it, by "switching users" and once "switched" ... just trash the db it just made.

How to find yours? There are so many levels of expertise at Spotlight, I'm going to suggest downloading EasyFind by Devon Technologies -- it's free, and will find anything on your disk. Period. There are very few preferences, and one setting is to just search everywhere for anything.

Entourage usually keeps the folder " Microsoft User Data" in the your User/Documents folder, if I remember correctly ... oddly enough, it is also perfectly happy in User/Library/Preferences, where mine has been for so long ...

I suspect you haven't lost your mail at all. If, in fact, you really, truly have, I recommend you download trials of DataRescue and FileSalvage, which of course work as unerase utlilities, and see how you make out. Good luck!
 
That link I posted has nearly everything you'd like to know about Entourage :p

Here is the sections from their database FAQ:

Database FAQs

Where is my database located? [1]
Rebuild Database [1]
How do I backup/move my Entourage database to a new computer? [1]
Lost identity [1]
I tried all the tips for finding my database, but I still can't find it. [1]
Can I rename by database? [1]
Why does Entourage store all it's data in one big database? [1]
Isn't the Entourage database prone to corruption? [1]
Is there a size limit? [1]
View Contacts in database [1]
View mail messgages as text files [1]
Entourage quits in Rebuild screen before I can choose an option. [1}
Receive I/O error when I try to rebuild [1}
 
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