Entourage 2004 suddenly won't send nor download

[The Davester]

My config:

1GHz Ti PowerBook with 1GB DRAM
10.23 GB of free disk
Mac OS 10.3.9
Entourage 2004 Version 11.1.0 (040913) configured
to connect to our MS Exchange servers.

Problem:
Entourage was running just fine for several months.
This morning, no email was downloaded and no error
messages displayed. I fired up MS Outlook 2003 on
my PC and it downloaded several messages just fine.

I created a new message on Entourage, after hitting
the "send" button was greeted with an Error Description
box containing:

Error --
HTTP error. The server cannot fulfill the request.

Explanation --
Mail could not be sent.
Account name: "<not important>"

Error: -18500

News services work fine. Nothing was changed on the PowerBook
between last night and this morning.

Configured Thunderbird 1.0.6 and it evidently can send
and receive mail (via IMAP).

Could it be that our Windows-centric IT folks fiddled with
the Exchange Server and somehow blocked Entourage "signals"?

Looking forward to your help,
The Davester

 

[David Chou]

Root cause:
Some sort of MS exchange server failure affecting the
entire company (affected all exchange and IMAP clients).
The problem has been fixed and all is well with
my Entourage 2004.

 

[Steven Hubert]

When Entourage is open, and I have several projects that are active,
Entourage periodically updates the project files & e-mail on the server-my
iDisk.


The problem is that frequently, a beach-ball effect accompanies the updates
and makes me wait again & again before I can continue working. It happened
during the writing of this message.

Would someone kindly give me some good tech advice? Should I just stop using
Project Center? Just go back to Entourage X?

Steve
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

When Entourage is open, and I have several projects that are active,
Entourage periodically updates the project files & e-mail on the server-my
iDisk.


The problem is that frequently, a beach-ball effect accompanies the updates
and makes me wait again & again before I can continue working. It happened
during the writing of this message.

Would someone kindly give me some good tech advice? Should I just stop using
Project Center? Just go back to Entourage X?

I think you're probably in Tiger, because that doesn't happen much in
Panther. (It would be nice if you'd say so.) And Entourage X doesn't have
projects. Getting rid of shared projects on servers would be better than
going back to X.

Because your project on an iDisk, there's a much better solution.

If you were on another server, you'll have to wait for the Entourage update
expected later this year. But if it's on an iDisk, there's a better
solution in Tiger: go to System Preferences/.Mac/iDisk and turn .Mac
synching ON (Automatic - since Manual doesn't work anyway). What that does
is set up a copy of your iDisk on your own computer. Entourage happily syncs
to that without any freezes or holdups. Then the Finder periodically syncs
the local copy to the remote iDisk in the background, without troubling
Entourage. It actually works better than the Panther way (which is the same
as Tiger's .Mac sync OFF, but for some reason is not so problematic).

--
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.

 

[Steven Hubert]

I think you're probably in Tiger, because that doesn't happen much in
Panther. (It would be nice if you'd say so.) And Entourage X doesn't have
projects. Getting rid of shared projects on servers would be better than
going back to X.

Because your project on an iDisk, there's a much better solution.

If you were on another server, you'll have to wait for the Entourage update
expected later this year. But if it's on an iDisk, there's a better
solution in Tiger: go to System Preferences/.Mac/iDisk and turn .Mac
synching ON (Automatic - since Manual doesn't work anyway). What that does
is set up a copy of your iDisk on your own computer. Entourage happily syncs
to that without any freezes or holdups. Then the Finder periodically syncs
the local copy to the remote iDisk in the background, without troubling
Entourage. It actually works better than the Panther way (which is the same
as Tiger's .Mac sync OFF, but for some reason is not so problematic).

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am running Panther. I will give your
suggestion a try asap. Thanks very much for your reply.

 

[Steven Hubert]

I think you're probably in Tiger, because that doesn't happen much in
Panther. (It would be nice if you'd say so.) And Entourage X doesn't have
projects. Getting rid of shared projects on servers would be better than
going back to X.

Because your project on an iDisk, there's a much better solution.

If you were on another server, you'll have to wait for the Entourage update
expected later this year. But if it's on an iDisk, there's a better
solution in Tiger: go to System Preferences/.Mac/iDisk and turn .Mac
synching ON (Automatic - since Manual doesn't work anyway). What that does
is set up a copy of your iDisk on your own computer. Entourage happily syncs
to that without any freezes or holdups. Then the Finder periodically syncs
the local copy to the remote iDisk in the background, without troubling
Entourage. It actually works better than the Panther way (which is the same
as Tiger's .Mac sync OFF, but for some reason is not so problematic).

Just a couple of questions on your reply. I set up projects to be shared
using the iDisk. The whole purpose was to enable web-based work. Getting
rid of shared projects was not what I thought I wanted to do. In order to
change the way the projects are shared, I would have to modify the initial
storage location to be the local copy of the iDisk, correct? And that's what
allows the finder to sync with the iDisk without slowing down MS Office
operations?

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Just a couple of questions on your reply. I set up projects to be shared
using the iDisk. The whole purpose was to enable web-based work. Getting
rid of shared projects was not what I thought I wanted to do.

Since you're using an iDisk, you don't have to.

In order to
change the way the projects are shared, I would have to modify the initial
storage location to be the local copy of the iDisk, correct?

No. You don't have to do anything of the sort. I was just providing some
extra explanation. The instructions are simple. All you have to do, if
you're in Tiger (I think you still haven't said?) is go to System
Preferences/.Mac/iDisk and turn .Mac synching ON. Then Log Out/ Log In, or
Restart your computer. That's it. Done. It will work smoothly with Entourage
from now on, and you don't have to worry about anything. Just expect to wait
a few minutes (up to 5 minutes) after you make changes in the Project before
others sharing the project can see the changes, or else simply click once on
the double-arrow symbol next to your iDisk icon in any Finder window to get
it to sync now. (Although simply making any changes on the iDisk seems to do
the same thing, so you should not have to do it manually.) You'll see a
mini-progress bar at the bottom of the Finder window "Synching iDisk" and
you'll see when it finishes. You never see "two" iDisks (a local one on
your computer and the remote one on the server) - you see only one. [The one
you see is the local copy.] It's all done behind the scenes.

And that's what
allows the finder to sync with the iDisk without slowing down MS Office
operations?

Checking the preference in System Preferences/.Mac/iDisk to ON is what does
that. It ensures that Entourage, like you when you drag items to the iDisk,
is just talking to the local copy, and that the Finder (or system) itself
does the synching with the remote server in the background. That means that
Entourage never has to wait for it to be free and hold up all other UI
actions while it's waiting - it never has to wait.

--
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.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am running Panther. I will give your
suggestion a try asap. Thanks very much for your reply.

You can't do it in Panther. There's no such .Mac system preference in
Panther. In Panther, you and Entourage are always interacting directly with
the server. Personally, I never had too much hold-up in Panther, although it
did happen occasionally: things became much worse in Tiger until I found the
fix. So if you're getting this in Panther (it's always possible that Apple
changed something recently with the servers hosting the iDisks, with an eye
more to Tiger), there's nothing you can do about it. I'd strongly recommend
upgrading to Tiger.

--
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.

 

[Steve]

After setting up a local copy of my iDisk and setting it to update the
server automatically, I have no ability to send an invitation (say to
myself at my home computer)

Error Message: "Entourage cannot create e-mail invitations for shared
projects stored on your computer. To access shared project
information, other users can connect to your computer and then
subscribe to this shared project. For information about how to share
projects, see Help on sharing projects"

I have not tried to connect from my home computer to my office computer
because I believe it would likely be a hassle. Even though there's a
fixed IP address here, I would probably have to change settings in the
router and hopefully not mess up other settings.

What do you suggest I do to "invite" to the project?

 

[Barry Wainwright]

Instead of sharing the project on the local copy of the idisk, mount your
public folder on the desktop first (in the finder, choose 'Go > iDisk >
Other User's Public Folder' and enter your .mac name).

You can now share to this mounted public folder and can raise automatic
invites.

Alternatively, if this is too much hassle, just instruct your co-workers to
go through the following steps:

1. Mount you public folder as decribed above
2. Choose 'Subscribe to a project...' from the File menu
2. Navigate to the 'Archive.rge' file in the project folder on your public
folder and click the 'choose' button


That's all they need to do - you don't need the automated invite although it
does make things a little easier for non-techy recipients.

 

[Steve]

If you mean I cannot set up a local iDisk under Panther, that doesn't
seem correct as I had been doing so until a couple of days ago when I
started getting wierd error messages. (I had to run disk utility a
couple of times. See some of the dialogue with Barry pasted in below)

Prior to setting up the local iDisk, (thanks again for the idea) there
were serious slow downs as I mentioned earlier.

The latest issue is also spelled out below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"After setting up a local copy of my iDisk and setting it to update the

server automatically, I have no ability to send an invitation (say to
myself at my home computer)

Error Message: "Entourage cannot create e-mail invitations for shared
projects stored on your computer. To access shared project
information, other users can connect to your computer and then
subscribe to this shared project. For information about how to share
projects, see Help on sharing projects"

I have not tried to connect from my home computer to my office computer

because I believe it would likely be a hassle. Even though there's a
fixed IP address here, I would probably have to change settings in the
router and hopefully not mess up other settings.

What do you suggest I do to "invite" to the project? "


Reply



"Barry Wainwright Aug 25, 5:51 am
Instead of sharing the project on the local copy of the idisk, mount
your
public folder on the desktop first (in the finder, choose 'Go > iDisk >

Other User's Public Folder' and enter your .mac name).

You can now share to this mounted public folder and can raise automatic

invites.

Alternatively, if this is too much hassle, just instruct your
co-workers to
go through the following steps:

1. Mount you public folder as decribed above
2. Choose 'Subscribe to a project...' from the File menu
2. Navigate to the 'Archive.rge' file in the project folder on your
public
folder and click the 'choose' button

That's all they need to do - you don't need the automated invite
although it
does make things a little easier for non-techy recipients.