Contacts in Entourage 2004 for Mac missing!!

D

deb_dolittle

I opened up Entourage and found all my contacts were missing. In fact,
I got a message welcoming me to Entourage as if this was the first time
I used it!

I was using Entourage not more than an hour before and just to add a
contact. I never logged out of my laptop and as far as I know my laptop
did not shut down unexpectedly. No one else logged in.

I logged out and logged back in but the contacts were still missing.

Any ideas how this happened and where this data might be?

I am in a real panic here.
 
D

Diane Ross [MVP]

I opened up Entourage and found all my contacts were missing. In fact,
I got a message welcoming me to Entourage as if this was the first time
I used it!

I was using Entourage not more than an hour before and just to add a
contact. I never logged out of my laptop and as far as I know my laptop
did not shut down unexpectedly. No one else logged in.

I logged out and logged back in but the contacts were still missing.

Any ideas how this happened and where this data might be?

I am in a real panic here.
Click to expand...

Microsoft Entourage installs the Microsoft User Data folder (MUD) in your
User's Document folder. Inside this folder is your Identity (named Main by
default). All of your mail, contacts, etc are stored here. If you move this
folder, Entourage will not know where your mail is located and will open
with a new default identity that will be blank. To find a missing Identity
folder see:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/tips/tip009.html>
 
D

deb_dolittle

I believe I renamed the Documents file Business Documents. Would this
have caused the problem and if so will I find my missing file there? (I
am not at my laptop so I can't check it now)
 
M

MikeTRose

Hi Deb,

Renaming your Documents folder would definitely cause this problem.
Change the name back and you should be OK.

(As tempting as it may be to reorganize your home folder, it's
generally a bad idea to rename the 'default' folders -- Movies,
Pictures, etc. -- as Apple's applications use them for data storage and
expect them to be as-is. You should never, ever rename your Library
folder; that may disable your account completely.)

--Mike
 
D

deb_dolittle

Good thing to know. The makers of the computers should make it harder
to delete/rename these things, or at least name the folders something a
little more ominous like 'documents and settings' like the PCs do. I
use the folder name 'documents' quite a bit as subdirectories.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

You can tell it's an "official" (actually, the official term is "blessed")
folder due to the icon on it. Only official folders come with icons. Don't
change the name, position or anything else of official folders. You can make
as many subfolders, with any names you want including the same name, inside
it.

I have most of my regular documents inside a "Documents" subfolder of my
official ~/Documents folder. This setup was useful back in the early days of
OS X when I still sometimes booted into OS 9 with its own blessed Documents
folder on the hard drive. I made an alias to the "Documents" subfolder in my
OS X partition inside that OS 9 Documents folder. I still do the same thing
on my Panther partition for when I boot there (I do software testing there
sometimes). Each system has its correct blessed ~/Documents folder, with an
alias to the real location on my Tiger partition. Same for the Microsoft
User Data folder - I have only one, inside my blessed ~/Documents in my
Tiger partition. There's an alias to that in the equivalent location on my
Panther partition, so I can access the same identity in Entourage.

Most people don't have multiple bootable partitions and so don't need this
setup. But if there's any other reason why you might want to keep folders in
non-default locations, use an alias in the default location. Most of the
time, just leave everything where it belongs. And leave the official
folders' names alone too.

--
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.
 
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