Importing Entourage X Data to Entourage 2004 Doesnt Work

P

philwells

My customer needs an email from an old Entourage v.X Database file. She
has Entourage 2004 installed. I tried, as per Paul B.'s posting in
2005, to Import the Ent X database by navigating to it on her external
firewire drive at
..../Documents/MicrosoftUserData/OfficeXIdentities/MainIdentity but the
importer window says no Entourage X Identities exist there. What
constitutes a valid "identity"? What does Ent 2004 need to see in a
directory to decide that it is, in fact, seeing an Ent X Identity

There is > 1 database on her external drive and I've tried pointing at
each of them with the same results.

I may have caused this problem myself. I initially tried to open these
old Identities with Ent 2004. Each brought up the Database Utility.
Some allowed themselves to be rebuilt with success messages, some did
not.

I have also tried installing a copy of Office X I have but it's an
upgrade and wont accept Office 2004 as the product to upgrade from and
I dont have 2001 or 98.

So, I guess I need to know 1) have I destroyed these datafiles by
trying to open them in 2004 & 2) if not, what needs to be present so
Ent 2004's Import will recognize one or more of these databases & 3)
are there any other routes to my ultimate goal of mounting one or more
of these old data files?

Thanks in advance

Phil Wells
San Diego
 
D

Diane Ross

Try dragging the Office X MUD folder to the desktop to see if that helps
with the import.

I'm not sure what you did when you tried to open the old files with
Entourage 2004, but if they were upgraded you cannot Import the data. Are
you able to open any of the Identities with 2004? If yes, then you use
Switch Identities to open the file, find the email, drag it to the desktop,
switch back to regular Identity and drag in the email.
 
P

philwells

Thanks for your kind assistance, Diane.

I moved one of the DATABASE files I have, along with the files MAILING
LISTS, RULES, and SIGNATURES, into a folder tree as follows:

(desktop)/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/Main Identity/. I
had to create a new tree because the one on the external HDD has so
many attachments and other Identities that I literally cant fit it on
my main HDD where my Desktop is!

I assume there's nothing magic about these folders (like the blessed
folders we had in Mac Classic). I just used the Import function, picked
Entourage X, clicked BROWSE, and navigated to the Main Identity folder
described above. When I did, I saw DATABASE and the other 3 files but
they were greyed out.

I also created a new Identity and copied the old database I'm trying to
open over top of the new database created by Ent 2004 for this new
Identity. I then opened Ent 2004 again as this new Identity and Ent
said the database needed work, so I let the Database Utility do its
thing. All that's left when it's done "rebuilding" this old database is
an empty database. So much for rebuilding.

You'd think that the Database Utility would be smart enough to know
that the database it's being asked to work on is the wrong version
rather than decimating the database AND saying that the process was
successful.

Any other ideas?
 
B

bm

i also found to my detriment that the database etc. folder structure
for entourage X and entourage 2004 is quite different so moving the
database files does not work, and that the import did not either.

the only solution I found for getting data out of my entourage X
database was:
- to find a machine with entourage X on it
- to drop my beloved Entourage X database, rules etc. into a new
identity folder ( Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X
Identities/NewIdentity/) i had previously created in the program itself
(so not to destroy what was in the other identity)
- to install office 2004 onto that machine. it asked me if i wanted to
import a database from entourage x. yes i said. it worked. when i
looked at it the data was in entourage 2004.
- from there I could export specific parts, but I decided to copy the
whole database, rules etc. onto a stick and move it into a new identity
of the entourage 2004 of the computer of my choice.

in short, I neeeded an entourage X program and an installation disk of
entourage 2004 to do this. the database did not appear damaged by my
unsucessful efforts at opening it (but then maybe I was just lucky).
but my precious database is always backed up somewhere anyway. hope
this helps.
 
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