Help with identities

K

krblackwood

Help!

Two days ago I posted a problem with Office but that has been full
resolved thanks to, in part, your help here. Thanks!

I had to do a complete reinstall of office and now all is going well. I
have Office 2004. I had the foresight to backup my Microsoft Identities
files to CD. I copied them into the Documents folder and opened up
Entourage. It went great. My emails and calendar and tasks and contacts
were there. I worked all day yesterday doing normal work and all went
well. I shut down the computer and began again this morning and
everything is gone! It's as if I have loaded a new copy of Entourage. I
have read the Entourage help files online and nothing seems to work.
Even if I re-copy my database from the CD, Entourage doesn't seem to
see it. It just gives me a blank calendar, etc.

I must be missing something. I am relatively new to Mac and Entourage
and need specific steps. I have Entourage working and I have my saved
database on a CD. I know that info is there because I already had it
working once.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Ken B
 
M

Michel Bintener

Hello again,

first of all, your working identity might still be on your Mac. Try
switching identities (Entourage>Switch Identity) and see if your restored
old identity is on that list; if it isn't, something bad must have happened.

Thankfully, however, you've got a backup (aren't you glad you made that
backup? It always pays off!), but there's one or two things that you need to
do first before copying your MUD folder into your Documents folder: make
sure that no Office application is running, and disable the Database Daemon
that's running in the background. To disable the daemon, go to
Applications/Utilities and launch Activity Monitor. You'll see a process
called Database Daemon, so select that one and click on Quit Process in the
upper left corner.

The Database Daemon is always running in the background, it enables for
instance Entourage to display Office notifications such as reminders even
when the main program isn't running. The daemon will maintain a link to your
database, even if you appear to have deleted it by replacing it with a new
copy, so that might be the explanation for your inability to restore the old
database. (Out of curiosity, have you restarted your computer at some point?
That should have done the same job, hypothetically at least.) Once the
daemon's disabled, you should be able to replace your MUD folder, and when
you launch Entourage, it *should* display your old database again.
 
K

krblackwood

Hello Michel,

Thanks for helping. I cannot find the "Database Daemon" in Activity
Monitor. I looked under the "All processes" tab but no process with
that name is there. Could it be called something else? I should add
that I am using O. 2004 student edition, if that makes a difference.

There is one possible process and one that doesn't seem to belong. One
is called "mdimport" and is listed with me as user. But there is
another instance of "mdimport" that is listed with "nobody" as the
user. When I tried to quit the "mdimport" registered to "nobody" I was
asked for my adm. password, so I backed off and left it.

To answer your ? from the previous post, I DID restart the computer.
That's when my Entourage data came up missing. Let me recap: I did a
complete reinstall of OS X and then Office 2004 Student Edition. I
copied my backuped MUD file into the Documents folder and opened
Entourage. All my data was there. I then used the computer as usual for
work yesterday reading emails, using all Entourage functions normally
with no problem. Then I shut down the computer last night. I don't
usually do that, but I did last night. This am I restarted the computer
and Entourage did not have my info anymore.

I should add that I have performed all current updates to the new OS X
installation as well as the Office install. My data was even syncing
with iCal until today.

Thanks for your help!

Ken
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Hello Michel,

Thanks for helping. I cannot find the "Database Daemon" in Activity
Monitor. I looked under the "All processes" tab but no process with
that name is there.
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it then. Once you get Entourage working with an identity,
the Database Daemon will function again.
Could it be called something else? I should add
that I am using O. 2004 student edition, if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...

No difference. Never called anything else (earlier versions of the OS refer
to it as "Microsoft Database Daemon" in Activity Monitor).
There is one possible process and one that doesn't seem to belong. One
is called "mdimport" and is listed with me as user. But there is
another instance of "mdimport" that is listed with "nobody" as the
user. When I tried to quit the "mdimport" registered to "nobody" I was
asked for my adm. password, so I backed off and left it.
Click to expand...

Don't touch the lowercase processes. They are built-in background system
processes, usually essential to your computer running.
To answer your ? from the previous post, I DID restart the computer.
That's when my Entourage data came up missing. Let me recap: I did a
complete reinstall of OS X and then Office 2004 Student Edition. I
copied my backuped MUD file into the Documents folder and opened
Entourage. All my data was there. I then used the computer as usual for
work yesterday reading emails, using all Entourage functions normally
with no problem. Then I shut down the computer last night. I don't
usually do that, but I did last night. This am I restarted the computer
and Entourage did not have my info anymore.

I should add that I have performed all current updates to the new OS X
installation as well as the Office install. My data was even syncing
with iCal until today.
Click to expand...

Nothing to do with any of that. I suspect that something in your shutdown
process misfired and what you actually got was a force-quit of your system,
so your file system is now reflecting an earlier saved state, before you
copied your backed-up MUD file in.

I suggest you quit Entourage and all Office apps. (If you have any recent
POP emails in local folders that you got yesterday and today, first drag
them into a Finder folder where they will be .eml files. When you get back
to your backed-up identity, drag the .eml files into Entourage Inbox or
other folders. If all your mail is IMAP or Exchange, don't bother. Same with
news messages - they'll all be on the server and downloadable.)

I haven't reviewed this whole thread, but quit Entourage and other apps.
(Yes, check again for Database Daemon and quit it if it's there. If not,
never mind.) Copy your backed up MUD folder to ~/Documents again. (NOTE:
this must be your user Documents folder, as appears in the sidebar of Finder
folders; real location is Hard Disk/Users/you/Documents.)

Open Entourage again. If it's an empty database, go to Entourage/Switch
Identities, and switch to another identity.

Is there any chance that you are now in a different OS user? In that case,
you wouldn't find your identity there - each OS user has its own Documents
folder with its own MUD folder. You can do a search in the Finder or
Spotlight for "Microsoft user Data" (no quotes). Also try "Office 2004
Identities" - it might have got moved out, and "Main Identity" or whatever
you might have named your identity to.

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

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

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

krblackwood

Eureka!

Got it all back! The problem was I was putting the MUD file in the
wrong place. The path HD/Users/me/Documents is where is should be.

Thanks a bunch!

Ken
 
K

krblackwood

Eureka!

Got it all back! The problem was I was putting the MUD file in the
wrong place. The path HD/Users/me/Documents is where is should be.

Thanks a bunch!

Ken
 
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