Entourage/Sync Services/Exchange -- the case of the disappearing contacts

A

Andrew

Hi...

Once a week or so, some glitch between entourage, sync services and my
exchange server at work causes all of my contacts to disappear. They
disappear out of Entourage, out of the sync services conduit to my
Address Book and on my exchange server. They are gone forever.

The only way to get them back is to restore an old version of my
Address Book and re-sync everything.

This is a HORRIBLE time sink and really really frustrating.

I'm on a MacBookPro using 10.4.7 and Entourage 11.2.5

Has anyone encountered a similar situation???

One additional thing to note is that my Entourage accesses my exchange
server not over a network but over the webmail protocol, so that i can
use it for email when i'm out of the office.

Please tell me there is a fix,solution... something!

thanks,
andrew
 
O

ourson66

I have had this happen once only, and never since (thank HEAVENS!)
I would also greatly appreciate any feedback on this, in the event that
it happens again.
Steve.
 
J

Jeremy Reichman

Once a week or so, some glitch between entourage, sync services and my
exchange server at work causes all of my contacts to disappear. They
disappear out of Entourage, out of the sync services conduit to my
Address Book and on my exchange server. They are gone forever.

The only way to get them back is to restore an old version of my
Address Book and re-sync everything.

This is a HORRIBLE time sink and really really frustrating.

I'm on a MacBookPro using 10.4.7 and Entourage 11.2.5

Has anyone encountered a similar situation???

One additional thing to note is that my Entourage accesses my exchange
server not over a network but over the webmail protocol, so that i can
use it for email when i'm out of the office.

Please tell me there is a fix,solution... something!
Click to expand...

I encountered a similar situation a few weeks ago, and it started at the
iChat/Address Book level, _not_ within Entourage, based on my experience.

I launched iChat, only to discover that my Buddy List had reverted to Screen
Names rather than people's names from contact cards.

I flipped over to Address Book, which was blank. No groups/mailing lists,
not contacts, nothing. Tabula rasa.

I switched to Entourage, which still had contacts. Since I also sync to
Exchange and feared the worst, I tried to make a backup -- but you can't
back up Exchange contacts with File > Export in Entourage 2004 SP2 and later
(only local contacts, alas). So, I quickly closed the lid on my PowerBook to
put it to sleep so that Entourage could not sync the "changes" from Address
Book up to my Exchange account.

I then went to a Windows computer, launched Outlook 2003, connected to my
Exchange account, and used its Export feature to back up my contacts. For
good measure, I backed up my calendar. Both were saved to PSTs.

I went back to the PowerBook, where Entourage updated its contacts from Sync
Services, meaning that they were all deleted. It then synchronized that
state up to Exchange, where all my contacts were deleted.

Using Outlook again, I restored my contacts on Exchange, and let those
changes sync back to Entourage and through Sync Services to Address Book. I
then recreated my groups/mailing lists in Address Book by hand.

Now, I'm using the Backup feature of Address Book (File menu?) at least once
per week. I also reported the issue in the Apple Discussions on the Apple
Support site, and several others chimed in that this was a fairly regular
occurrence with Address Book lately. I don't recall having it happen under
Panther, but have used mostly Entourage in the Tiger timeframe, until Sync
Services support came along.

I agree that it's very frustrating, but if your problem happened in the same
order mine did, it's not likely to be Entourage's fault, but Apple's. I
don't know what could have triggered it.
 
A

Andrew

Jeremy said:
I encountered a similar situation a few weeks ago, and it started at the
iChat/Address Book level, _not_ within Entourage, based on my experience.

I launched iChat, only to discover that my Buddy List had reverted to Screen
Names rather than people's names from contact cards.

I flipped over to Address Book, which was blank. No groups/mailing lists,
not contacts, nothing. Tabula rasa.

I switched to Entourage, which still had contacts. Since I also sync to
Exchange and feared the worst, I tried to make a backup -- but you can't
back up Exchange contacts with File > Export in Entourage 2004 SP2 and later
(only local contacts, alas). So, I quickly closed the lid on my PowerBook to
put it to sleep so that Entourage could not sync the "changes" from Address
Book up to my Exchange account.

I then went to a Windows computer, launched Outlook 2003, connected to my
Exchange account, and used its Export feature to back up my contacts. For
good measure, I backed up my calendar. Both were saved to PSTs.

I went back to the PowerBook, where Entourage updated its contacts from Sync
Services, meaning that they were all deleted. It then synchronized that
state up to Exchange, where all my contacts were deleted.

Using Outlook again, I restored my contacts on Exchange, and let those
changes sync back to Entourage and through Sync Services to Address Book. I
then recreated my groups/mailing lists in Address Book by hand.

Now, I'm using the Backup feature of Address Book (File menu?) at least once
per week. I also reported the issue in the Apple Discussions on the Apple
Support site, and several others chimed in that this was a fairly regular
occurrence with Address Book lately. I don't recall having it happen under
Panther, but have used mostly Entourage in the Tiger timeframe, until Sync
Services support came along.

I agree that it's very frustrating, but if your problem happened in the same
order mine did, it's not likely to be Entourage's fault, but Apple's. I
don't know what could have triggered it.
Click to expand...


Jeremy, thanks for your enlightened response. It is a very frustrating
occurrence, particularly considering that every time I have to rebuild
my contacts, I lose all of the categorization info that I'd
painstakingly spent hours creating -- with 1900 contacts, it takes a
freakin long time.

I hope that somehow these issues are fixed with updates to the Mac OS.
Frustrating is an understatement.

I have, however began backing up my Address Book contacts to .Mac once
a day (though, for some reason the Backup program hasn't been keeping
to schedule). Such is life.

Blech.
 
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