Entourage X to 2004/Address Book Gone

M

Michael Wise

Greetings, and thanks in advance for any insight any may have on this
matter.

Am I incorrect in my belief that when one upgrades from Office/Entourage
X to 2004, not only are their Entourage mail boxes converted over to
2004 format, but also their Entourage address book?

I ask, because a client of mine just upgraded himself to 2004; saw all
his "old" mails converted and within Entourage 2004; trashed his Office
X indentities folder; and then noticed that his 2004 address book was
completely empty. I asked him if he was referring to the 200 most recent
email addresses typed feature, and he assured me that he was not...that
he had a regular Entourage X address book.

Doesn't upgrading to 2004 convert/upgrade the Entourage address book as
well?



--Mike
 
M

Mickey Stevens

The second dialog in the import process prompts the user, asking what data
to import from the old database. It's possible that "Contacts" was left
unchecked inadvertently.

Also, database corruption in the source database can keep data from
importing into a new Entourage 2004 database when it should; had the user
tried rebuilding the database and importing again, he or she might have had
better luck.
 
B

bigger mac

They should have exported the contacts from OfficeX to the desktop
As a text file and then imported the file into Entourage.

Its the only way I could get it to work for me.

Going though the import wizard corrupted/crashed Entourage every time.

Hope this helps.
 
M

Michael Wise

bigger mac said:
They should have exported the contacts from OfficeX to the desktop
As a text file and then imported the file into Entourage.

Its the only way I could get it to work for me.

Going though the import wizard corrupted/crashed Entourage every time.
Click to expand...


They didn't do that, so now they are probably SOL (as they dumped their
OS X Identities folder). I would have though 2004 would import that sort
of thing automatically w/o incident.


--Mike
 
M

Michael Wise

Mickey Stevens said:
The second dialog in the import process prompts the user, asking what data
to import from the old database. It's possible that "Contacts" was left
unchecked inadvertently.
Click to expand...

Logic would dictate that 99.9% of the people upgrading their Entourage
expect that all their emails, calendars, and contacts would be upgrades
as well, so shouldn't it (Contact import) be checked by default? (my
client assures me he didn't uncheck anything).
Also, database corruption in the source database can keep data from
importing into a new Entourage 2004 database when it should; had the user
tried rebuilding the database and importing again, he or she might have had
better luck.
Click to expand...


If there is database corruption, wouldn't Entourage inform one of that
during the upgrade process? Would it (Entourage) inform them of
corruptions in general? How would somebody know they need to rebuild
their database absent any visual or functional cues to indicate the
database is damaged?


--Mike
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Logic would dictate that 99.9% of the people upgrading their Entourage
expect that all their emails, calendars, and contacts would be upgrades
as well, so shouldn't it (Contact import) be checked by default?
Click to expand...

It is. All boxes are checked by default.

(my
client assures me he didn't uncheck anything).
Click to expand...

If you're an experienced support helper, you'll know that that doesn't mean
much! Users do all sorts of things and forget about them. Nevertheless, that
might not have been the issue. There might perhaps have been some sort of
corruption in the X database which nevertheless allowed the rest of the data
to import (but that's pretty unusual - usually the import would simply
quit). Or maybe he inadvertently deleted things. You could actually check
for this by doing another import with _only_ contacts and groups checked. If
there's no problem, they should import now.
If there is database corruption, wouldn't Entourage inform one of that
during the upgrade process? Would it (Entourage) inform them of
corruptions in general? How would somebody know they need to rebuild
their database absent any visual or functional cues to indicate the
database is damaged?
Click to expand...

It depends how serious the corruption is. If the corruption is mild,
Entourage X could go on working until it gets working, but you might have
some "issues". As I said, normally, if there's a problem importing into
2004, you would get an error message then and nothing would import. Silently
omitting just contacts would be extremely unusual, but I suppose could
happen. Test it as above. If you provide support to lots of users, you could
recommend rebuilding in X just before importing into 2004 as "insurance".

MS do work at improving this stuff all the time. Not only do they keep
improving the database _and_ the rebuild mechanism, both of which are now
_much_ better in 2004, but there's now also a "Verification" mechanism in
2004 designed to do just what you suggest. The Database Utility in the
Office subfolder - which can also be accessed by just holding down Option
key when launching Entourage - now has a feature for Verification of that
database. And by going into its Preferences (there's just one pref) you can
set it to run automatically as well. so it checks frequently on your
database. If it finds even mild corruption, it will let you know. It's brand
be in 2004, and there have been a few reports that it sometimes seems to
report a need for rebuilding when there's no apparent corruption, so it
might be a bit "over-sensitive" still. Or maybe just very careful. This
feature did not exist in Entourage X, so you'd normally only discover
serious corruption when it happened. (And it's _not_ a good idea to do
frequent rebuilding when there's no cause - that can overwork your hard disk
for no good reason.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
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