events lost when syncing to iCal

[JJP]

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

I have not been able to get Entourage to sync with iCal successfully. When I have tried, entire days worth of events have been deleted. (Tuesday seems to be a particularly problematic day for some reason.) The first time this happened I had to get our Exchange administrators to reload my entire initial Calendar. That was a few weeks ago. I thought I'd try again today, making sure to backup my Calendar on Outlook, so that I could restore it myself if necessary. The same problem of missing events occurred. The message "The database daemon has encountered an unknown error" came on not long after I began the sync (merge), and the program closed. But on subsequently re-opening Entourage it was clear that the Calendar had lost the events permanently. I have restored the Calendar but feel that I have to give up on syncing to iCal. Is this a well know bug? Does anyone know if microsoft is working on it? Is there a way to make the sync work reliably in the meantime?

I realize syncing problems come up frequently on this forum, but many of the issues are different. I would very much appreciate if someone can sum up the current state of affairs on lost items when syncing to iCal with Exchange as part of the picture.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I have not been able to get Entourage to sync with iCal successfully.

The synchronisation through SyncServices is buggy as hell. Having both
MacOS X and ENtoruage perfectly up to date helps, and rebuilding the
Entoruage database (launch Entourage pressing the Option key down)
certainly can do a lot of good, but at this point, anything can happen,

Though I have to admit, most of what I've seen were duplications, not
event loss. Maybe it is simply a matter of rebuilding the database for
you after all :-\


Corentin

 

[JJP]

Thanks very much for your response.

One more question. You say that SyncServices is buggy as hell. I may play it safe and forego syncing to iCal till the feature is in better shape (and hopefully the software developers do intend to deal with the bugs). But I have found that Address Book is syncing quite nicely (once I made sure to use common fields in all three programs: Entourage, Address Book, and Outlook). My question: Is Address Book more stable, or should I be anticipating problems down the road with it as well?

 

[Diane Ross]

One more question. You say that SyncServices is buggy as hell. I may play it
safe and forego syncing to iCal till the feature is in better shape (and
hopefully the software developers do intend to deal with the bugs). But I have
found that Address Book is syncing quite nicely (once I made sure to use
common fields in all three programs: Entourage, Address Book, and Outlook). My
question: Is Address Book more stable, or should I be anticipating problems
down the road with it as well?

You could try syncing one item at a time in Entourage. After it syncs, turn
that option off and sync to the next item. Set all to Off until you need to
sync again.

Apple's Address Book has problems with mobile me. With any sync options have
backups. When something goes wrong, it can be disastrous unless you have
backups.

Sync Services still causing problems for some users after SP1 (The Entourage
Help Blog) <http://tinyurl.com/6ztjfl>

Warning: Syncing with Entourage 2008 (The Entourage Help Blog)
<http://tinyurl.com/58epgx>

 

[JJP]

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Kerry]

Thanks for the advice.

Diane and Corentin are correct. I'll just add one thing. If you are
going to sync to Entourage just have one module enabled at a time and
your syncs will be fine. So, say your most active activity is Calendar
and tasks, just have that enabled and change to the others when you
need to update them. You can leave one module on for continuous sync'g
and all will be fine. The craziness happens when more than one module
is turned on at the same time. There is no time-frame on a fix or if
there will be a fix but one would think this would be fixed some day.
The next iteration of OSX, OSX 10.5.7, is supposed to have a fair bit
of tweaking to sync services so who knows if this will help or make
things worse.