Microsoft Office Reminders, My Day, Entourage 2008 Web ServicesEdition and network home folders

[alan]

I support a group of users who have recently upgraded to Entourage
2008 Web Services Edition in order to reap the supposed benefits of
its improved communications with Exchange 2007. But despite it
improving things in that area, it has totally broken them within
another:

Once Entourage is running, neither Microsoft Office Reminders nor My
Day will work properly. In fact, they won't work at all. Any event
that would trigger a reminder causes the Reminders program to launch,
but it only appears for a brief moment in the Dock and then is gone
without ever having displayed its window. Attempting to launch My Day
(whether from within Entourage or by normal Mac methods) has the same
result.

When Reminders attempts to launch, you get the following messages in
the Console log:

"
10/20/09 3:56:13 PM Microsoft Office Reminders[393] start timer
10/20/09 3:56:13 PM Microsoft Office Reminders[393]
ECFIdentityLaunchDefault failed
10/20/09 3:56:13 PM Microsoft Office Reminders[393] ECF shutting down.
Notifying
10/20/09 3:56:13 PM Microsoft Office Reminders[393] freeing menu
objects
10/20/09 3:56:13 PM Microsoft Office Reminders[393] Clearing selection
"

Attempting to launch My Day gives:

"10/20/09 4:25:58 PM com.apple.launchd[94]
([0x0-0x9c09c].com.microsoft.myday[565]) Exited with exit code: 1 "

Both Reminders and My Day can launch successfully before Entourage is
run (such as if they or Database Daemon are in Login Items), but once
Entourage has been launched, neither will launch again successfully
after they are quit.

Anyone else seeing this?

(BTW, where do I actually report a bug on Microsoft's site?)_

 

[Diane Ross]

Anyone else seeing this?

This hasn't been reported before AFAIK. I'm checking with a contact to see
if they can offer a solution.

Exactly how was the update applied?

(BTW, where do I actually report a bug on Microsoft's site?)_

Bugs are reported when you crash and send the MERP report. There is no
official bug reporting site. You can send feedback, but I don't think this
is what you are asking to do.

Send feedback to Microsoft.

When working in Office, you can use the ³Send Feedback² option under the
Help menu in all of the Office applications or visit

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx>

 

[Diane Ross]

Can you check the version info on My Day and Office Reminders? If they are
not version 13.0.0 this could be the problem.

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/Microsoft Office Reminders.app/
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/My Day

Last update applied: 13.0.0

Microsoft Entourage.app: 13.0.0
Microsoft Excel.app: 12.2.0
Microsoft Word.app: 12.2.0
Microsoft PowerPoint.app: 12.2.0
Microsoft Office Reminders 13.0.0
My Day 13.0.0

 

[alan]

This hasn't been reported before AFAIK. I'm checking with a contact to see
if they can offer a solution.

Exactly how was the update applied?


Bugs are reported when you crash and send the MERP report. There is no
official bug reporting site. You can send feedback, but I don't think this
is what you are asking to do.

You realize that that's a little nuts, right?

Send feedback to Microsoft.

When working in Office, you can use the ³Send Feedback² option under the
Help menu in all of the Office applications or visit

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx>

Thanks, I'll do that.

 

[alan]

Can you check the version info on My Day and OfficeReminders? If they are
not version 13.0.0 this could be the problem.

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/Microsoft OfficeReminders.app/
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/My Day

Last update applied:  13.0.0

Microsoft Entourage.app: 13.0.0
Check.

Microsoft Excel.app: 12.2.0
Check

Microsoft Word.app: 12.2.0
Check

Microsoft PowerPoint.app: 12.2.0
Check

Microsoft OfficeReminders13.0.0
Check

My Day 13.0.0

Check

And to round it out for good measure, the Microsoft Database Daemon is
also 13.0.0

BTW, this problem only occurs with network home folder users. Local
users are fine and if I redirect the Microsoft User Data folder to the
local disk, it works for network home folder users that way, too. But
that puts critical data on the workstations where it will not be
backed up.

 

[Diane Ross]

BTW, this problem only occurs with network home folder users. Local
users are fine and if I redirect the Microsoft User Data folder to the
local disk, it works for network home folder users that way, too. But
that puts critical data on the workstations where it will not be
backed up.

The whole idea of an Exchange account is that the messages are stored on the
server and that is what is backed up. Not the individual computers.

 

[alan]

The whole idea of an Exchange account is that the messages are stored on the
server and that is what is backed up. Not the individual computers.

I'm sorry to disagree with you Diane, but Entourage keeps a local copy
of the information in its "Database" file which it keeps in sync with
what is on the Exchange server. This has not changed in any way with
Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition.

That Database file is not access directly by Entourage, but is instead
accessed via the "Microsoft Database Daemon" application, which will
be automatically launched if it is not running when Entourage is
launched. This in turn allows multiple applications (in addition to
Entourage itself, Microsoft Office Reminders, My Day and all the other
Office programs) to access the same data store at the the same time.

And it worked perfectly with the previous versions of Entourage,
whether accessing an Exchange email account or a regular POP or IMAP
account and whether the data store was on a local drive or on a
network home folder.

In short, yes, there is a store on the Exchange server, but Entourage
keeps its own store which is essential to the working of the whole
system. Only now it only works if the data store is on a local drive.
If the data store is on a network home folder, once Entourage has
launched, neither Reminders, nor My Day will launch. They will try to
launch and then fail.