Entourage Calendar view not available

[LuigiB]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

When I go to my Entourage calendar, the main calendar view, currently set to "Week," causes the following vague error message:

"Entourage cannot open the item due to an error.
Quit and restart Entourage. If this problem continues you might need to verify and rebuild the Entourage database."

Quitting and rebuilding do not help. Oddly, the calendar appears intact in My Day and syncs to my iPhone via iCal, so I doubt the calendar is corrupt.

Entourage pops up the same message when I go to "To-dos" under Tasks.

Any ideas?

 

[Diane Ross]

Entourage pops up the same message when I go to "To-dos" under Tasks.

Any ideas?

Create a new Identity in Entourage. You won't even need to add account info
to test this. Check to see if you get the error message in the new Identity?
If it works then rebuilding did not fix your problems and you will need to
manually move into a new Identity.

How to manually move your data. (when import fails and/or you need to move
to a new Identity same version or revert to an older version)

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/manual_install.html>

 

[Luigi Benetton]

Thanks Diane,

Here's what I have so far:

Under a new identity, the errors do not happen.

On two export attempts from within the old identity, Entourage flashes this error message: "The export could not be completed: Quit and restart Entourage. If this problem continues, you might need to verify and rebuild the Entourage database."

Verification: Problems were found with your database.

Database utility.log: ERROR: Corruption detected on index [TSRC:1]

A Google search on "error index TSRC:1" turned up three entries, none of which were applicable

Where do I go from here?

Other piece of information: I solved a shutdown problem this past week by manually futzing with old Google Alert messages that I wanted to delete. They were in the trash and they made Entourage hang on shutdown. (I have Entourage delete the trash on shutdown.) Entourage stopped responding for as long as an hour after shutdown.

I got rid of those seemingly corrupted emails and Entourage now shuts down just fine. This makes me think there might be corrupted calendar or task entries that are messing up the main "week" calendar view and the "To-do" view under Tasks. What do you think?

FYI: I would like to preserve PROJECT data (I accept having to recreate rules and account info for my five accounts - or maybe I can import account info from Apple Mail?)

Thanks in advance,

Luigi

 

[Luigi]

By the way: in Rebuild at Step 5/5, Validating and copying link data - the Rebuild hangs when the progress bar is at the very end of the process. Moving the mouse pointer over it causes the spinning beach ball of death. I let this process continue on battery from 70% charge to 10% - about two hours, I think - and this did not solve the problem.

Might this be because of a project I created that day (Mon Aug 25) or earlier that somehow contains corrupt tasks or calendar entries?

More background info

- there is no MS Exchange involved. The main database lives on my Mac, with backups elsewhere.

- Contacts in Entourage no longer show up in Address Book (which I use to synchronize to an iPhone) I don't know where the problem lies, although all Contacts in Entourage show up fine.

 

[Guest]

Further findings and thoughts:

- There doesn't seem to be any corruption (that I can find) of contacts, calendar, tasks, projects in Entourage.

- The problem must be in the "links. (It is if the Database Rebuild hanging on step 5/5 is any indication.)

- I don't know how to diagnose broken links - can anybody point me to a resource?

-The only Entourage-only issues are inaccessible views for the calendar and for to-dos - again, the data seems just fine.

- Would a reinstall of Office 2008 possibly solve the problem?

 

[Luigi]

More information:

For some reason, there's a visible GAP in my contact list. Very interesting! I wish I could post a screen shot.

Also, the links in contacts that have links don't all open properly. I've been deleting them as I come across them, but they take a long time to delete - five minutes or more each.

 

[Barry Wainwright]

More information:

For some reason, there's a visible GAP in my contact list. Very interesting! I wish I could post a screen shot.

Also, the links in contacts that have links don't all open properly. I've been deleting them as I come across them, but they take a long time to delete - five minutes or more each.

It's a symptom of database corruption.

start Entourage with the option key held down until you see the rebuild
screen, then follow the instructions.

 

[Luigi]

Thanks for the tip, Barry.

Unfortunately, the rebuild hangs where it did last week - at the end of Step 5/5: Validating and copying link data. I gave up after half an hour at this point and force quit the Microsoft Database Utility.

Since there's no way to recover projects, I would REALLY like to keep this database, so I'm using the "hang" as a clue and removing/troubleshooting as many links as I can. I know - like finding a needle in a haystack, but this haystack means a lot to me.

I've started with the Contacts database, since I've already found a few contacts with links that don't seem to work properly, and disposing of said contacts can take a VERY long while.

I plan to tackle tasks now, since I suspect that the "missing contacts" are linked to faulty tasks.

Would you know if there are any scripts that could speed up this troubleshooting process?

Low-priority FYI: I spent half an hour on the phone with MS Entourage tech support, who finally told me that since I can't export the database (I couldn't export tasks or contacts properly) or rebuild the database, there was nothing they could do and closed the case.

 

[Luigi]

Thanks for the tip, Barry.

Unfortunately, the rebuild hangs where it did last week - at the end of Step 5/5: Validating and copying link data. I gave up after half an hour at this point and force quit the Microsoft Database Utility.

(more info below)

 

[Barry Wainwright]

Thanks for the tip, Barry.

Unfortunately, the rebuild hangs where it did last week - at the end of Step 5/5: Validating and copying link data. I gave up after half an hour at this point and force quit the Microsoft Database Utility.

Since there's no way to recover projects, I would REALLY like to keep this database, so I'm using the "hang" as a clue and removing/troubleshooting as many links as I can. I know - like finding a needle in a haystack, but this haystack means a lot to me.

I've started with the Contacts database, since I've already found a few contacts with links that don't seem to work properly, and disposing of said contacts can take a VERY long while.

I plan to tackle tasks now, since I suspect that the "missing contacts" are linked to faulty tasks.

Would you know if there are any scripts that could speed up this troubleshooting process?

Low-priority FYI: I spent half an hour on the phone with MS Entourage tech support, who finally told me that since I can't export the database (I couldn't export tasks or contacts properly) or rebuild the database, there was nothing they could do and closed the case.

you may be giving up too soon - rebuilds _can_ take hours.

try to set it going last thing at night and let it run overnight.

 

[Luigi]

Well Barry, you were right. I started the rebuild at 5:30 am, went out for the day and when I checked the computer 12 hours later, the rebuild finished successfully. Thanks!

Luigi wrote: > Thanks for the tip, Barry. > > Unfortunately, the rebuild
hangs where it did last week - at the end of Step 5/5: Validating and
copying link data. I gave up after half an hour at this point and force
quit the Microsoft Database Utility. > > Since there's no way to recover
projects, I would REALLY like to keep this database, so I'm using the
"hang" as a clue and removing/troubleshooting as many links as I can.
I know - like finding a needle in a haystack, but this haystack means
a lot to me. > > I've started with the Contacts database, since I've already
found a few contacts with links that don't seem to work properly, and
disposing of said contacts can take a VERY long while. > > I plan to tackle
tasks now, since I suspect that the "missing contacts" are linked to faulty
tasks. > > Would you know if there are any scripts that could speed up
this troubleshooting process? > > Low-priority FYI: I spent half an hour
on the phone with MS Entourage tech support, who finally told me that
since I can't export the database (I couldn't export tasks or contacts
properly) or rebuild the database, there was nothing they could do and
closed the case.





you may be giving up too soon - rebuilds _can_ take hours.





try to set it going last thing at night and let it run overnight.






-- Barry Wainwright Microsoft MVP