Please could someone put me out of my misery...I've been using
Entourage for years and am sick and tired of always loosing my
Catergories in Calender (v.imp to me) everytime I have to use a back-up
copy (after changing computers / reinstalling OS).
Does anyone know, for sure, of a Calender programme that is capable of
this simple task (saving categories on the back-up) ?
Please help. Loosing my categories everytime I reinstall the OS /
upgrade is driving me dotty !
Are you using the File/Export/Archive method in Entourage 2004? Yes, that
loses categories because it saves calendar items as .ics files, contacts as
..vcf files, etc. - which don't retain categories.
There are two ways.
1) The simple way is to back up the entire Microsoft User Data folder in
~/Documents, or at least the Office 2004 Identities (or Office X Identities,
if that's your version) folder within it. That folder includes the entire
database of your identity - all messages, contacts, calendar, tasks, rules,
etc. etc - everything, complete with categories. You simply replace the
existing Identity folder by the backed-up one. You'll lose anything (incl.
messages) that are more recent than the back-up. so before doing so, you can
drag out all recent items to a folder on your desktop, where they become
files, then drag them back in afterwards. (They will lose categories and
some other info, such as received time and links, but in the case of
messages you probably won't care much.)
People who use a program like Retrospect (and probably Apple's Backup works
the same way) to do regular "incremental" backups of just modified files,
every night or whenever on an automatic schedule, find that they soon run
out of hard disk room because the Identity Database file is so enormous
(often running to 100s of MB, even a GB) and it's incremented continuously,
so it gets backed up every night. What I do about that is have a second
back-up of my backup file - I get Retrospect to overwrite the Main backup
every 2 weeks after backing up (also a rewrite) the Main Backup to the
Reserve one. That way I always have between 2 and 4 weeks of daily backups.
If you don't want to run to cost of getting Retrospect, or Backup that comes
with a .Mac subscription, you can simply make a Finder copy of your Identity
folder every so often, replacing the previous backup.
2) If you don't want to do this, or in addition you'd like to back up to
text files that take virtually no disk space at all (a few KB each), you
could get my Export-Import X shareware scripts at
MacScripter.net <
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
They will export, separately, your Calendar, tasks, Contacts, etc -
whichever you want. You could do just Calendar if you want, or more. The
info is backed up with categories, and takes just a few seconds via the
Export scripts (even saves the colors of the categories). The Import scripts
will bring them all back. You get options to export just events within the
time frame of your choice, etc., to export just certain categories if you
wish, and the option to delete exported items from Entourage. Etc.
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
