Entourage mail files, possibly corrupted when upgrading to iLife 05?

B

brianutter

Hi,
I'm a new Mac user--so please forgive if I'm asking stupid questions.
Here's the situation:

I run entourage, and created a personal mail folder tree on so I could
pull off (and store) email from my ISP mail client. I've got no idea
where that file lives on my Mac.

This weekend, I upgraded to iLife 05. When I opened up my entourage,
it was as though I was just setting up the account for the first time
(it asked me for my ISP info, etc so it could grab my mail). My
personal mail files are gone (from the entourage interface).

Questions:
1. Where are my mail files stored on my computer?
2. Is it possible that Entrourage simply lost touch with my personal
mail file, and I can point it back to the data? If so, how do I do
this?
3. Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks,
Brian
 
F

Farmer Bob

The location of the support database for Office, including Entourage,
is:
user/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X (or 2004) Identities/Main
Identity
in this folder you will find:
Database
Database Cache
Mailing Lists
Rules
Signatures
and "Old Database" and "Old Database Cache" when you do a rebuild of
the Database. These files can be used to recover Entourage to the point
that the rebuild was done or tossed if the rebuild was successful.

Take a look in this area and check to see the creation/modification
dates on the Database file is. If it is when you first set up
Entourage, your fine. If it is at the time of the iLife install, you
may be out of luck. In that case if you bought iLife from an Apple
Retail Store I'd go there and tell them what happened and get their
help.

I have the Main Identity folder on another drive and aliased into the
Identities folder for safety reasons. It works great. I have been doing
it since OS9 and a major crash that totally took out Entourage. This
means that if the drive/partition hammers or you do a major OS update
(software install) and these files get wiped, they don't. Just the
alias does. The main batch of files is safe and sound elsewhere.

I would do a rebuild of the database and see if the process links up
with the files or finds them and takes care of the problem. To do this,
with Entourage closed, open it and quickly press the "option" key. This
will get you a pop up window that offers two levels of rebuilding plus
instructions/descriptions of the extent that the rebuilds will go. Try
this.

I haven't grabbed iLife yet because it's not at the top of my list. But
because you have had a problem, I will be aware and wary of installing
it.

Post back with any questions or results.

.. . . fb
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Hi,
I'm a new Mac user--so please forgive if I'm asking stupid questions.
Here's the situation:

I run entourage, and created a personal mail folder tree on so I could
pull off (and store) email from my ISP mail client. I've got no idea
where that file lives on my Mac.

This weekend, I upgraded to iLife 05. When I opened up my entourage,
it was as though I was just setting up the account for the first time
(it asked me for my ISP info, etc so it could grab my mail). My
personal mail files are gone (from the entourage interface).

Questions:
1. Where are my mail files stored on my computer?
2. Is it possible that Entrourage simply lost touch with my personal
mail file, and I can point it back to the data? If so, how do I do
this?
3. Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks,
Brian
Click to expand...


Under OS 9/Office 2001 the correct location for your identity folder is in:

<Startup Disk:Documents:Microsoft User Data:Office 2001 Identities:

Under OS X/Office vX it's:

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/
(where '~/' is your current login's 'Home' directory)

Under OS X/Office 2004 it's:

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/

Make sure you put your main identity folder in there, then if you still
can't see it when you restart Entourage, try to change identities (it's
under the File menu) and see if your identity shows up in the list.
 
C

Craig Deutsch

Your files are located in [Hard Drive] > [User] > [Documents] > [Microsoft
User Data].

I'm not exactly sure how to re-point Entourage to the right directory, but
try Entourage (menu) > Switch identity... > and then navigate to the
directory above to find it.

If that doesn't work, then perhaps someone else on this board knows the
right answer...

Craig
 
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