All contacts get deleted!

F

Fred Hamidi

Hi There,

I rely on the sync feature of Entourage 2004 with address book and .mac. In
the past 2 months, in two occasions one being today, my contacts got
deleted. It is very annoying and although I learned from the first time to
have a back up but it happened again today. I don't know if it gets deleted
from address book first and then syncs back to entourage or vice versa. I
only know that everything is gone and I am talking about hundreds of
contacts. Only two contacts remain, the only group I have and my own
contact. They don't get deleted.

My guess is one of the following:
A virus in office (yesterday was Oct 13 but I don't want to be
superstitious)
A bug in sync feature in entourage
A bug in sync feature in address book
One thing I know, I never had this before using sync feature in entourage.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Fred
 
D

Diane Ross

I rely on the sync feature of Entourage 2004 with address book and .mac. In
the past 2 months, in two occasions one being today, my contacts got
deleted. It is very annoying and although I learned from the first time to
have a back up but it happened again today. I don't know if it gets deleted
from address book first and then syncs back to entourage or vice versa. I
only know that everything is gone and I am talking about hundreds of
contacts. Only two contacts remain, the only group I have and my own
contact. They don't get deleted.

My guess is one of the following:
A virus in office (yesterday was Oct 13 but I don't want to be
superstitious)
A bug in sync feature in entourage
A bug in sync feature in address book
One thing I know, I never had this before using sync feature in entourage.
Click to expand...

To understand how the sync process works, read " BASICS OF HOW SYNC SERVICES
WORKS by Andy Ruff MacBU Program Management"

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/sync_services_basics.html>

It's not a virus AFAIK. Did this happen after an OS update? There seems to
be more reports of this kind recently. I don't know if it's just an Apple
problem or a combination of Apple and Microsoft.

My advice is to keep good backups and report the bugs as you have done. In
addition to posting here (Microsoft does monitor this list), I suggest you
send Feedback to Microsoft. Look under Help in the Menu bar.

I will pass this on to my sources also.

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
C

caranan

I have had sync services enabled for some time, and haven't had any
problem. I recommended it to a friend would called me a week or so
after to tell me all his addresses had been deleted. No one could
figure out why.

2000 contact addresses have just disappeared, without my changing
anything. I had duplicated MS Identify folders, they are gone from
both. VERY effective. I didn't realize the words "sync" and
"obliterate" had become synonymous.

This is indefensible; that fact that it occurs and someone recommends
that I read an article (referenced above, that should be entitled How
Sync Services DOESN'T work), is precisely why I am saying goodbye for
good, to Entourage, and to Microsoft whenever humanly possible.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I have had sync services enabled for some time, and haven't had any
problem. I recommended it to a friend would called me a week or so
after to tell me all his addresses had been deleted. No one could
figure out why.

2000 contact addresses have just disappeared, without my changing
anything. I had duplicated MS Identify folders, they are gone from
both. VERY effective. I didn't realize the words "sync" and
"obliterate" had become synonymous.

This is indefensible; that fact that it occurs and someone recommends
that I read an article (referenced above, that should be entitled How
Sync Services DOESN'T work), is precisely why I am saying goodbye for
good, to Entourage, and to Microsoft whenever humanly possible.
Click to expand...

A less drastic alternative would be to use my Sync Entourage-Address Book
and Sync Entourage-iCal scripts, rather than Sync Services. (Incidentally,
the problems of deleted contacts you've had are a result of glitches in
Apple's Sync Services, not in Entourage nor Microsoft's Sync Services for
Entourage feature. So, logically, if you were going to get mad at someone,
it should more rightly be Apple. They're still working at it.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

caranan said:
2000 contact addresses have just disappeared, without my changing
anything. I had duplicated MS Identify folders, they are gone from
both. VERY effective. I didn't realize the words "sync" and
"obliterate" had become synonymous.
Click to expand...


I've seen this once. The SYstem address book was also synching with a
Palm-based phone. A firmware update on the phone wiped out its address
book, the next sync wiped out the System AB data and SyncServices
cleared out the Entourage address book to reflect the changes... :-@

Do you sync with any such device??

Corentin
 
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