Entourage, Exchange, and iPhone

[sandycreek91]

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

My calendaring needs serious help. I am using Entourage 2008 as a client to Exchange 2003. I'm using the Exchange client method. My email is fine, but my calendaring is not working correctly,

My Entourage calendar is fine. However, my iPhone calendar is completely hosed, and my OWA calendar is not correct. Moreover, when using the "schedule" view of the calendar entry creation dialogue, my own calendar is not correctly reflected in the dialogue.

I've talked to my corporate IT department (which does not support Mac at all), and they told me that Entourage deletes everything from Exchange. I have a hard time believing that, but I can't seem to find anything to confirm or refute the assertion. If this is true, can I get some suggestions on how to manage the three different interfaces I use to keep them consistent. If this is false, could I get some insights on what might be happening?

 

[Karri]

What you in OWA is the actual state of your mailbox/calendar/contacts on the Exchange server.

If OWA differs from Entourage, the latter's local cache is corrupted. The cache can be emptied (Folder Properties/Empty Cache) but you WILL LOSE everything that is not visible in OWA.

Basicly you need to backup the current cached state of Entourage (to local folders/on my computer store in Entourage or some such) and then force resync to Exchange through the Empty cache command.

 

[sandycreek91]

Thanks for the tip, Karri. How do I back up the contents of my calendar? Since it's the calendar that's hosed on Exchange, how do I keep those items from Entourage and get them back to Exchange?

This is my work calendar, so it's not just my appts. It's tons of recurring meetings that I've been invited to.

 

[Karri]

There's no way around the fact that a situation like this is really tricky.

First I would double check that the mailbox on server really is missing the calendar events. You could probably ask your IT support to see your Exchange calendar through Outlook (online mode).

And when you are 100% sure there are missing items in Exchange that are visible in Entourage you need to do the backup.

Unfortunately I can't come up with anything really elegant for the backup and restore. Best I can think of is backing up the calendar by simply dragging&dropping it to the desktop. It should generate Calendar folder with all the appointments as a separate ics files.

And to play really safe, please make a backup of the whole Office Identity in ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data.

Afterwards when the Empty cache command has succeeded and Entourage is syncing fine again you can restore the events for example by simply dragging them one at a time to the Entourage icon or more automatically first to the iCAl and then from iCal to Etnourage using either the built in Entourage sync or some other tools/scripts. Precise advise is really hard to give here.

Good luck.

 

[sandycreek91]

Thanks for the suggestions, Karri. I'll work on this over the weekend, likely. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[sandycreek91]

Karri,

You're brilliant! This completely solved my problem.

Thanks a ton for your help.

Tim