Entourage and Exchange - where did my contacts go

[fellmeister]

This has hapened to me once before but this time I have noted what went
wrong. As my laptop fill sup with masses of files and I approach the
glorious transition to an Intel macbook, I noticed Entourage playing up
a bit due to masses of email I know an 11GB Main Identity database is a
bit excessive - but wo has time to archive!

So before I could run a file to file copy of the main Identity I ran
into a few more crashes than usual. At this point the database neede
re-building. This it duly did and a couple of hours later I had a new
slimmed down 3GB Main Identity. However this has none of the Exchange
email in it since I have not allowed it to re-sync yet as it will just
add back the missing 9GB of Exchange email and run out of hard disk
space on my challenged Powerbook.

So at this point in time my new Identity has none of my last year's
contacts since they are all I hope inside Exchange somewhere and I
cannot look them up or export them from the corrupt database since that
is just a lup of 11GB that just insists on being re-built if you try to
access it.

I am pretty confident that all the email and fingers crossed Contacts
and DIary by the way will come back when I re-sync but wanted to know
how to avoid this in future. Why did Exchange hijack all my personal
contacts and personal diary entries and shift them into its database.
In the old days Entourage used to keep your personal stuff local on the
Powerbook now it all seems to be synced back to Exchange. is this
correct?

And while I am having a rant why oh why whenever you connect to
Exchange does it refuse to accept your password when you log on for the
first time but always when you do it the second time?

I hope one of you Most Valued Chappies can assist.

regards

Simon

 

[William Smith]

Hi Simon!

My comments are inline to yours...

This has hapened to me once before but this time I have noted what went
wrong. As my laptop fill sup with masses of files and I approach the
glorious transition to an Intel macbook, I noticed Entourage playing up
a bit due to masses of email I know an 11GB Main Identity database is a
bit excessive - but wo has time to archive!

Ack! 11GB? Your Exchange administrator allows an email store this big?
While everyone has different needs and limitations I would say something
this size simply goes beyond best practices. Backups will take longer
and synchronization can be a nightmare! Stability lessens when dealing
with large email stores too.

Who has time to archive? Do you save every message you receive or do you
keep the junkmail too? Do you receive lots of attachments? Detach them
and store them on a file server. One of the best phrases I can offer is
"Organization takes time and organization saves time." Take time to
archive your messages offline ‹ maybe into several archives by year or
some other scheme. You'll find yourself able to find the messages that
you need to find much more quickly.

So before I could run a file to file copy of the main Identity I ran
into a few more crashes than usual. At this point the database neede
re-building. This it duly did and a couple of hours later I had a new
slimmed down 3GB Main Identity. However this has none of the Exchange
email in it since I have not allowed it to re-sync yet as it will just
add back the missing 9GB of Exchange email and run out of hard disk
space on my challenged Powerbook.

Take this time to connect to your account via webmail (OWA) and delete
messages you don't need. You might ask your Exchange administrator to
split your account into multiple accounts online. One could be for
current mail and the rest could be for various archives sorted by year,
customer, project, etc.

So at this point in time my new Identity has none of my last year's
contacts since they are all I hope inside Exchange somewhere and I
cannot look them up or export them from the corrupt database since that
is just a lup of 11GB that just insists on being re-built if you try to
access it.

Your contacts should be accessible via OWA. You can't export them but
you can at least organize them online or find an address you need.

I am pretty confident that all the email and fingers crossed Contacts
and DIary by the way will come back when I re-sync but wanted to know
how to avoid this in future. Why did Exchange hijack all my personal
contacts and personal diary entries and shift them into its database.
In the old days Entourage used to keep your personal stuff local on the
Powerbook now it all seems to be synced back to Exchange. is this
correct?

Diary? What feature is this?

Exchange has always been online (on the server) and stored your messages
and contacts there. If you use to use Entourage X before 10.1.6 then you
were probably using either POP or IMAP to connect to your server (two
other protocols Exchange can use to for clients to connect with it) but
since Entourage 2004, messages and contacts synchronize rather than
download and delete.

And while I am having a rant why oh why whenever you connect to
Exchange does it refuse to accept your password when you log on for the
first time but always when you do it the second time?

This could be for a variety of reasons but I've heard others report this
as well. Maybe Office 2008 will fix this since it's basically being
rewritten.

I hope one of you Most Valued Chappies can assist.

So, not sure what advice you're really looking for but I hope you manage
to take time to organize and trim-down your email account online. You'll
find less really is more in terms of efficiency.

Good luck! bill

 

[fellmeister]

Bill

Many thanks for the response. I will try to thin it out. I get loads of
attachments and of course saving them to a separate server makes sense
and I often do however I am tempted to leave them along with the email
since it is easier to manage and find related issues, once you move the
attachment outside the email you lose the relationship.

The company system has recently had an archive system applied to it so
message more than 6 months old are now archived. I can't wait to see
what Entourage will make of that when I get it re-connected and
synchronised again.

Still very annoying though to lose all one's categorsation highlighting
and Projects when you have done a re-build.

Simon