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Entourage opened this morning with a new empty window with only a welcome to entourage message in my in box. Everything else is gone. I am using 9.2.2 on an iMac 1400SE and office 2001. I have thrown away the entourage preferences folder, rebuilt the desktop, zapped the PRAM all to no avail. It was working OK yesterday, but there was a freeze when I was running SilverKeeper to back up my computer to another hard drive. Entourge may have been on when that happened, I don't recall for sure. When I look in the Documents folder-Microsoft User Data-Office 2001 Identities-Main Identity folder, the Database has 5megs and the Message one has 64meg in them, so the data seems to be there, but Entourage doesn't seem to see it.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thank you,
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Entourage, All data gone
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#2
Damien 
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- Joined: 03-February 01
Posted 10 August 2003 - 07:10 PM
The fact that your messages DB is 64MB in size indicates that perhaps your mail is still there but Entourage can't see it. Here's what I'd try (after backing up your 64MB database) to another volume:
1) BACK UP your database!!!
2) Remove entirely the Main Identity folder (in Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Identities/) from the Documents folder. You might delete it, although moving it from its expected path should be enough.
3) Entourage will see that the Main Identity folder does not exist and will create a new one, complete with and emtpy mail database.
4) Now, open the newly-created Main Idenity folder and delete only the contents of the Mail folder (the message database and the three or four other items in it). Leave the folder structure intact.
5) Now copy from your backup into your new folder structure your backed up message database and its accompanying files.
6) Launch Entourage and seee if Entourage can read the mail database.
The idea here is that perhaps Entourage has "lost track" of where the mail database is stored and if you recreate the expected folder path structure but populate it with your old mail database, perhaps Entourage will be able to see it again.
Good luck. I've done this many times with both OE and Entourage when they glitched. Most times it works.
The other possibility is that your Entoruage mail database truly is hosed and is reporting 64MB of size when it's actually empty (because when you delete mail from Entourage's mail database, you're only removing the reference to the email, not the actual email itself; you must rebuild the database to truly delete it from the mail database).
1) BACK UP your database!!!
2) Remove entirely the Main Identity folder (in Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Identities/) from the Documents folder. You might delete it, although moving it from its expected path should be enough.
3) Entourage will see that the Main Identity folder does not exist and will create a new one, complete with and emtpy mail database.
4) Now, open the newly-created Main Idenity folder and delete only the contents of the Mail folder (the message database and the three or four other items in it). Leave the folder structure intact.
5) Now copy from your backup into your new folder structure your backed up message database and its accompanying files.
6) Launch Entourage and seee if Entourage can read the mail database.
The idea here is that perhaps Entourage has "lost track" of where the mail database is stored and if you recreate the expected folder path structure but populate it with your old mail database, perhaps Entourage will be able to see it again.
Good luck. I've done this many times with both OE and Entourage when they glitched. Most times it works.
The other possibility is that your Entoruage mail database truly is hosed and is reporting 64MB of size when it's actually empty (because when you delete mail from Entourage's mail database, you're only removing the reference to the email, not the actual email itself; you must rebuild the database to truly delete it from the mail database).
#3
fhmoore
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- Group: Members
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- Joined: 14-January 02
Posted 10 August 2003 - 09:37 PM
Damien,
Thank you very much. Your suggestion worked. I have two system folders on my hard drive. Somehow entourage connected to the smaller system I am not using and put a Microsoft User Data file there, and began using the empty file. I put it in the trash and restarted, and all is back to normal again. Thanks again
Thank you very much. Your suggestion worked. I have two system folders on my hard drive. Somehow entourage connected to the smaller system I am not using and put a Microsoft User Data file there, and began using the empty file. I put it in the trash and restarted, and all is back to normal again. Thanks again
#4
car1son
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- Group: Members
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- Joined: 30-August 01
Posted 11 August 2003 - 08:24 AM
After you backup the Main Identity folder, you can ask Entourage to try to rebuild the Database by launching it and immediately pressing and holding the Option key until the rebuild dialog appears. I suggest you do the Advanced rebuild, since there are clearly problems. More info on this procedure can be found in the Entourage readMe file in the Microsoft Office 2001 application folder.
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