Entourage Address Book corruption?

T

texastroutbum

I'm experiencing a very frustrating thing with Entourage 2004 (version
11.2.1) and the Address Book. As I am editing and updating contact
addresses, the address book is randomly populating other contacts with
incorrect data.

For example, if I go to "John Smith's" contact and update his address
to "123 Elm St.", I suddenly find that 5-10 OTHER contacts now have the

"123 Elm St." address....

This has occurred in other manners as well...If I edit a contact name
i.e. "John Doe" then multiple other contacts change to "John Doe"...

I had one occurance of editing a contact, and that contact's picture
populated about 5-10 other contacts.

Anyone have any hints on how to fix this? I've run the database utility

and it tells me the database is fine.
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

I'm experiencing a very frustrating thing with Entourage 2004 (version
11.2.1) and the Address Book. As I am editing and updating contact
addresses, the address book is randomly populating other contacts with
incorrect data.

For example, if I go to "John Smith's" contact and update his address
to "123 Elm St.", I suddenly find that 5-10 OTHER contacts now have the

"123 Elm St." address....

This has occurred in other manners as well...If I edit a contact name
i.e. "John Doe" then multiple other contacts change to "John Doe"...

I had one occurance of editing a contact, and that contact's picture
populated about 5-10 other contacts.

Anyone have any hints on how to fix this? I've run the database utility

and it tells me the database is fine.
Click to expand...

It is possibly an early sign of mild database corruption.

Office vX:
Hold down the option key when starting Entourage and take the first option
('typical rebuild'). If this doesn¹t resolve the problems, then try an
ŒAdvanced Rebuild¹.

Office 2004:
You still call the rebuilder by holding down Option key at launch, but it
now brings up a separate app "Database Utility" (which could be launched by
double-clicking of you wish) that lives in the Office subfolder.

First of all, if you have any Office apps open, a dialog comes up that
offers to quit them.

Then you get a window with a list of your identities to select from, and
four options:

1) It has a new feature "Verify database integrity" option: this should
reduce unnecessary rebuilding. Apparently it's quite sensitive. And see 4)
below.

2) "Compact the database". (Like X's "Typical rebuild").

3) Rebuild the database. (Like X's "Advanced Rebuild")

4) "Set database preferences". Actually there's only one pref: you can turn
on "Verify database in background "which means "run automatically" and let
you know if your database needs rebuilding.
 
J

Jeff Zienowicz

I've had the same problem and posted to the newsgroup about it (I think the
subject heading was "Address Book Bug?"). It is very frustrating, and I was
surprised that no one else seemed to be experiencing this.

At the very least, I now know I'm not hallucinating.

Rebuilding the database didn't help, and the issue is very reproducible for
me. I noticed it while in the process of swapping home and business
addresses for a number of contacts by cutting and pasting. I had a Contact
window open and was using the next button to check the next record, and that
seemed to be what was causing info from the record I had just edited to be
written over the next one. As I kept selecting the next record, each one
was overwritten with the same info.
 
T

texastroutbum

Jeff,

You've described in essence what I've experienced. I have rebuilt the
database repeatedly, but this seems to continue when I edit contacts.

did you find any way to edit contacts without corrupting the adjacent
contacts?
 
J

Jeff Zienowicz

Jeff,

You've described in essence what I've experienced. I have rebuilt the
database repeatedly, but this seems to continue when I edit contacts.

did you find any way to edit contacts without corrupting the adjacent
contacts?
Click to expand...
When I experienced the problem, I was going through the Address book,
straightening out "Home" and "Work" addresses. I ended up creating an
AppleScript that swaps Home and Work addresses. Running the script, rather
than cutting/pasting, did not generate the error (and saved me some time
too).

I wish there were a solution though, as I'm a bit nervous now editing my
Address Book. I try to edit only one contact at a time.

btw, I'm using 11.2.1 (SP2) on Tiger 10.4.3.
 
M

Microsoft

I'm also having the same problem. Here's how I can reproduce the issue:
1. Open a contact (call it Contact A)
2. Edit something on one of the tabs (e.g. Name & E-mail tab)
3. Edit something on another tab (e.g. the Personal tab)
4. Save the changes
5. Click the Next or Previous buttons (up/down arrow at the left of the
toolbar)
6. You are now viewing a different contact (call it Contact B)
7. Make a change on one of the tabs
8. Save the changes

At this point, you'll see that the changes to Contact B on the active tab
are saved correctly. However, the changes you made on any inactive tabs for
Contact A are incorrectly saved to Contact B. This is easily reproducible
every time you try it.
 
R

Rangi Keen

I called Microsoft about this issue and they confirmed is was a bug in
11.2.1. The woman I spoke with was able to reproduce it with 11.2.1, but not
with 11.0 so it must have been something introduced in SP1 or SP2 (she
didn't try 11.1). She added it to the list of open issues for Entourage and
said it would be fixed in the next service pack. She wasn't able to give me
a timeline of when the update would be released. Based on previous SP
timings, it could take until October 2006 before we see the fix. Let's hope
it comes sooner than that.

In the mean time, if you only edit one tab at a time and use the
next/previous buttons your data should be saved correctly. If you edit data
on more than one tab, close the contact window before editing another
contact.
 
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