[mythdoc]

What gives? Entourage keeps putting valuable emails in the "deleted items" folder. It says the filter is disabled but it keeps filtering anyway. I have tried trashing the preferences and settings files, also, setting up a simple rule to put all messages in inbox. Nothing has worked. Any concrete suggestions would be welcome.

[car1son]

Actually, the Junk Mail Filter on my Entourage doesn't delete mail automatically - it just marks the category of any mail it decides is junk as "Junk". Deleting junk automatically needs a rule to delete items classified as Junk. (The default behavior is to leave it in the Inbox, listed in gray rather than black.)
Try this experiment: If you spot a mail item that was incorrectly deleted, manually drag it from the trash back to the Inbox. Then select it in the Inbox, and select "Apply Rule" from the Messages menu, choosing "All Rules". See if it deletes it again.
Try quitting Entourage; remove the 'Rules' file from your "Main Identity" folder (or whatever you named your identity in "Office X Identities" in "Microsoft User Data" in your "Documents" folder.) (Just drag it to the desktop). Then relaunch Entourage, let it create a new empty Rules file, and see if anything still gets deleted.
Assuming that stops it from deleting the mail, you can put your original Rules file back and disable some of your rules to find out which one is trashing your mail.
If that doesn't stop it from deleting mail, we'll have to think of some other explanation.

[mythdoc]

Carlson, I tried those things already. (First, I removed the rules file, rebuilt the database, messed around with the junk mail filter (which currently is disabled), then I tried to make a NEW rule to put all messages in the inbox, but nothing has worked.) I don't get much spam in this mailbox and I don't want valuable messages atomatically put in the "deleted items" folder. Is it possible this bug crept in when I transferred my files from Entourage OS9 to X? Is there another file that I haven't trashed that holds the junk mail filter settings? Confused.

[car1son]

Puzzling...
The Junk Mail Filter settings are stored with your Identity, I would presume in the Database file. However, as I said, the Junk Mail Filter by itself only marks mail as "junk"; that doesn't delete messages unless there is a Rule that deletes junk.
Try making a new Identity ("Switch Identity" from the Entourage menu) and re-enter the account information. That'll give you a clean slate to play with. See if it still happens.
What kind of email account are you having the problem with? (POP, IMAP, Hotmail?) Is there more than one account doing this? Does the account provider provide any Spam filtering on their server? (For example, Hotmail has spam filters which will mark messages as "junk" as you receive them, independent of the Entourage setting, or you can have Hotmail automatically move what it suspects as spam to a Junk Mail folder automatically on their end, without ever downloading it to your Mac. Such messages will never appear in your Inbox - they'll be downloaded directly from the Junk Mail folder. An IMAP account with a server-provided Spam deleter might appear the same way, meaning messages the server thought were Spam would automatically go to the Deleted or Junk folder, before Entourage even saw the messages.)

[mythdoc]

Thanks for your help, Carlson. I have learned a lot but your strategy of starting fresh ultimately has worked. I think there was a problem with my database file. First, the new identity would not import my old messages. When I manually moved the database file into the new identity the problem would recur. Rebuilding the database (simple or advanced) was not helping. Finally, I made a new clean identity, transferring the messages via an mbox text export then import. I still wonder whether these problems are left over from the Entourage 2001 to Entourage X move I made late last fall. But, no matter now, I seem to be working fine again.