Entourage Database Corrupts Easily

P

Paul Seymour

For the past 6 months or so, I have been syncing up my Entourage data with
my Palm Pilot using the conduit downloaded from Microsoft at
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0b2d2c6a-b60e-4559
-ae82-9034e52c5e2e&displaylang=en>.

In this time, my Entourage database has become corrupted many, many times.
It becomes corrupted when it behaves sluggishly (calendar events that take
more than a minute to delete) and refuses to sync up with the Palm (I get
the message "Conduit Manager has unexpectedly quit). When it becomes
corrupted, I have to manually export all my contacts, messages, calendar
events, notes and tasks, then create a new identity into which I import
them. The database becomes corrupted as often as once a week or as
infrequently as once a month.

Has anyone else had this experience? I'm currently debating shifting away
from Entourage toward Apple products such as iCal, Mail and Address Book.
Before I do, however, I'd like to see if there's any other alternative.
 
B

Barry N. Wainwright

For the past 6 months or so, I have been syncing up my Entourage data with
my Palm Pilot using the conduit downloaded from Microsoft at
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0b2d2c6a-b60e-4559
-ae82-9034e52c5e2e&displaylang=en>.

In this time, my Entourage database has become corrupted many, many times.
It becomes corrupted when it behaves sluggishly (calendar events that take
more than a minute to delete) and refuses to sync up with the Palm (I get
the message "Conduit Manager has unexpectedly quit). When it becomes
corrupted, I have to manually export all my contacts, messages, calendar
events, notes and tasks, then create a new identity into which I import
them. The database becomes corrupted as often as once a week or as
infrequently as once a month.

Has anyone else had this experience? I'm currently debating shifting away
from Entourage toward Apple products such as iCal, Mail and Address Book.
Before I do, however, I'd like to see if there's any other alternative.
Click to expand...

This is not normal behaviour. It is likely that the data on the palm has
been corrupted. I would advise that you reset the palm to delete all the
data, rebuild the entourage database then do a sync with 'entourage
overwrites palm' to put clean info back into the palm.

Hopefully this will stop the frequent corruption.

--
Barry Wainwright
Microsoft MVP (see http://mvp.support.microsoft.com for details)
Seen the Entourage FAQ pages? - Check them out:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

Please post responses to this newsgroup. If I ask you to contact me
off-list, remove '.INVALID' from email address before replying.
 
P

Paul Seymour

This is not normal behaviour. It is likely that the data on the palm has
been corrupted. I would advise that you reset the palm to delete all the
data, rebuild the entourage database then do a sync with 'entourage
overwrites palm' to put clean info back into the palm.

Hopefully this will stop the frequent corruption.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the tip. I have taken your advice and am in the process of
restoring data to my Palm. However, I am not optimistic that it will help.
Here's why:

First, I have rebuilt the Entourage database many, many times. I'm not sure
what this is supposed to offer, but it has never made any difference
whatsoever for me, doing either a typical or advanced rebuilt. For example,
after doing a rebuild just now, hitting command-3 to go to the Calendar
still takes a full minute. This is the identical problem I had prior to
rebuilding.

Second, about resetting the Palm, my Palm Pilot shares a design flaw that
many Palms have, which is that when the batteries are replaced, all data is
lost. (I've had 5 Palm Pilots over the years, and nearly all of them did
this eventually. I've learned to live with it.) So therefore, my Palm gets a
hard reset quite often, and still this problem persists.

Anyhow, as I said, I'm in the process of following your recommendations.
I'll let you know what I find. Thanks again!
 
P

Paul Seymour

This is not normal behaviour. It is likely that the data on the palm has
been corrupted. I would advise that you reset the palm to delete all the
data, rebuild the entourage database then do a sync with 'entourage
overwrites palm' to put clean info back into the palm.

Hopefully this will stop the frequent corruption.
Click to expand...


Okay, I have just finished my attempt to follow your advice. However, after
doing a Typical Rebuild of the Entourage database, and a hard reset of the
Palm, then setting "Entourage overwrites Palm" and attempting a sync, the
Conduit Manager has crashed just as it did previously.

Any other solutions short of doing away with Entourage?
 
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