Entourage database corrupted on 2 machines

B

BlueCalifornia

I'm running Office v.X on 2 machines -- a PPC 17" iMac and a 15"
MacBook Pro. A few weeks ago I lost all calendar function on the
iMac, rather quickly followed by loss of first sent items, junk
folder, and finally all mail functions. Attempting to accss any of
these yielded a dialog box saying "The action could not be completed.
Mail error." I tried rebuiding the database but got an end of file
message saying that the action could not be completed. I trashed the
database, reloaded a 4 month old archive and have been able to use
Entourage since then. Then, yesterday, started getting the same
dialog box when clicking on my sent mail folder on the MacBook,
quickly followed by loss of access to all folders, calendar and all
other Entourage functions. Trying to rebuild the database has yielded
the same end of file message.

Clearly, the first question is what could cause essentially the same
meltdown on two different machines? The databases on the two
overlapped from my using Migration Assistant when I bought the MacBook
last August but both had worked fine until recently. The second
question is how can I avoid this continuing to happen? I assume I can
trash the database on the MacBook and start from scratch, but that
leaves me without years worth of business emails, calendar items,
contacts, etc. This is a nightmare!

Thanks for any help.

Michael
 
D

Diane Ross

I'm running Office v.X on 2 machines -- a PPC 17" iMac and a 15"
MacBook Pro. A few weeks ago I lost all calendar function on the
iMac, rather quickly followed by loss of first sent items, junk
folder, and finally all mail functions. Attempting to accss any of
these yielded a dialog box saying "The action could not be completed.
Mail error." I tried rebuiding the database but got an end of file
message saying that the action could not be completed. I trashed the
database, reloaded a 4 month old archive and have been able to use
Entourage since then. Then, yesterday, started getting the same
dialog box when clicking on my sent mail folder on the MacBook,
quickly followed by loss of access to all folders, calendar and all
other Entourage functions. Trying to rebuild the database has yielded
the same end of file message.

Clearly, the first question is what could cause essentially the same
meltdown on two different machines? The databases on the two
overlapped from my using Migration Assistant when I bought the MacBook
last August but both had worked fine until recently. The second
question is how can I avoid this continuing to happen? I assume I can
trash the database on the MacBook and start from scratch, but that
leaves me without years worth of business emails, calendar items,
contacts, etc. This is a nightmare!
Click to expand...

The file that has reached it's end is often the preferences file. Move the
'Microsoft' folder out of your local preferences folder and try again. If
this fails, end of file means the file is too corrupted to rebuild.
--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
B

BlueCalifornia

Hi Diane,

Trashing the preferences file was no help. I still reached the end of
file message at the same point while attempting the rebuild. So I'm
back to my questions of why this would happen on two separate machines
at around the same time and what I can do to avoid this happening
again? Is there any reason to think that if I reload the database
from the same archive that it won't just get corrupted again? Do I
have to totally trash the database and start from scratch, giving up
years of emails, contacts, calendar items, etc?

Michael
 
D

Diane Ross

Trashing the preferences file was no help. I still reached the end of
file message at the same point while attempting the rebuild. So I'm
back to my questions of why this would happen on two separate machines
at around the same time and what I can do to avoid this happening
again? Is there any reason to think that if I reload the database
from the same archive that it won't just get corrupted again? Do I
have to totally trash the database and start from scratch, giving up
years of emails, contacts, calendar items, etc?
Click to expand...

If both database were based on the same bad database file then yes. I would
have expected this to have happened soon after the database was created
though.

Exported data will generally remove the corrupted data. As long as Entourage
can open export as much data out as possible and import into a new Identity.

You can export as an Entourage archive or drag messages to desktop as MBOX
files. For full details and help see:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/backup.html>

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/import_export/index.html>

Importing the data into a newly created Identity should rid you of the
corruption.


--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
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