In Entourage, how to configure a new Exchangeemail account when corrupted Entourage databaserebuildi

[robertyumd]

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

Thank you in advance for your time reading this and offering your help.

I have an Entourage 2008 Exchange email account configured, but now the database is corrupted, and I can not proceed to configure a new Exchange email account on the same Entourage 2008 MAC computer.

How do I configure a new Exchange email account in Entourage 2008 when rebuilding the corrupted Entourage database does not succeed?

I can just forget about the corrupted Entourage database, and start from new. I tried to rebuild the database, it took a long time at night ( the mailbox on Exchange is 8GB ) and it showed some error and I could not open Entourage to go to Tool.......Accounts.... to add a new account. Entourage always stays at the first page of options: to validate the database, to compact the data, to rebuild the databse, or to set preferences.

In Outlook, I can go to Control Panel and choose Mail to configure a new profile. I do not need to open Outlook in order to configure a new profile when configuring mailboxes in Outlook. Is there a similar way in Entourage for me to configure a new Exchange mailbox?

Your help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Robert

 

[Ed Kimball]

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

Thank you in advance for your time reading this and offering your help.

I have an Entourage 2008 Exchange email account configured, but now the
database is corrupted, and I can not proceed to configure a new Exchange email
account on the same Entourage 2008 MAC computer.

How do I configure a new Exchange email account in Entourage 2008 when
rebuilding the corrupted Entourage database does not succeed?

I can just forget about the corrupted Entourage database, and start from new.
I tried to rebuild the database, it took a long time at night ( the mailbox on
Exchange is 8GB ) and it showed some error and I could not open Entourage to
go to Tool.......Accounts.... to add a new account. Entourage always stays at
the first page of options: to validate the database, to compact the data, to
rebuild the databse, or to set preferences.

In Outlook, I can go to Control Panel and choose Mail to configure a new
profile. I do not need to open Outlook in order to configure a new profile
when configuring mailboxes in Outlook. Is there a similar way in Entourage for
me to configure a new Exchange mailbox?

Your help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Robert

How much free space do you have on your startup disk? Entourage would
probably need 16-24GB free in order to rebuild an 8GB database.

If that's not the problem, I would try the following:
Remove the Main Identity folder out of
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/
Launch Entourage; it will create a new blank identity.
Add your Exchange account to the new identity and open its Inbox, forcing
Entourage to Sync with Exchange.

If this works, you can then delete the OLD Main Identity Folder from
wherever you dragged it to.

 

[robertyumd]

ED, thank you.

How do I check the free startup disk space on MAC 10.5 with Entourage 2008? I am new to support MAC/Entourage. I have been working with Exchange/Windows/Outlook for a few years.

The user started the rebuilding process without checking the startup disk space. and I will work on it tomorrow. I do not want to cancel the rebuilding process.
I will configure one mailbox at a time if the rebuild does not work out after confirming enough free space / freeing up enough space in the startup disk.

Actually, it will be great if I can receive additional help from you or your team. It is about retrieving archived emails from this corrupted Entourage database. This user had 2 mailboxes configured and the user archived some emails from Entourage 2008 to a local folder on this MAC 10.5 machine, and it was about 2 GB.
The Entourage database had a total of 11 GB:
8GB from one mailbox ( on Exchange )
2GB for local archived emails
1GB from the other mailbox ( on Exchange )

I purchased EagleFiler recently for archiving emails on this MAC/Entourage 2008. But the Entourage database got corrutped before I use EagleFiler. My goals:
To have less than 0.5GB for the 2 mailboxes on Exchange server
To archive 2 separate mailboxes individually
To back up the individually-archived mailboxes to another computer

Thanks.
Robert

 

[Diane Ross]

How do I check the free startup disk space on MAC 10.5 with Entourage 2008?

You can do a "Get Info" on your hard drive, but I like to use the Activity
Monitor in Utilities. Click on the Disk Usage Tab (near the bottom of the
window) you'll see a graph and the actual amounts listed.

The user started the rebuilding process without checking the startup disk
space. and I will work on it tomorrow. I do not want to cancel the rebuilding
process.

We normally suggest creating a new Identity for Exchange accounts rather
than trying to rebuild. It's much quicker and gives better results. The fact
you are indicating that the rebuild is going on quite some time now,
indicates it is not going to be successful.

Rebuilding takes a huge amount of space. Logically, you could assume that
twice the space of the database should work, but actual use has shown that
the more free space the better the results.

Rebuilding a damaged database that exceeded size limit

I will configure one mailbox at a time if the rebuild does not work out after
confirming enough free space / freeing up enough space in the startup disk.

Actually, it will be great if I can receive additional help from you or your
team. It is about retrieving archived emails from this corrupted Entourage
database.

To recovery the messages in folders "On My Computer" I would delete the
Exchange account ( this will flush the big part which is Exchange messages
on the server) and try rebuilding. Otherwise, you can look at removing
individual items using other export methods.

 

[Ed Kimball]

You can do a "Get Info" on your hard drive, but I like to use the Activity
Monitor in Utilities. Click on the Disk Usage Tab (near the bottom of the
window) you'll see a graph and the actual amounts listed.


We normally suggest creating a new Identity for Exchange accounts rather
than trying to rebuild. It's much quicker and gives better results. The fact
you are indicating that the rebuild is going on quite some time now,
indicates it is not going to be successful.

Rebuilding takes a huge amount of space. Logically, you could assume that
twice the space of the database should work, but actual use has shown that
the more free space the better the results.

Rebuilding a damaged database that exceeded size limit


To recovery the messages in folders "On My Computer" I would delete the
Exchange account ( this will flush the big part which is Exchange messages
on the server) and try rebuilding. Otherwise, you can look at removing
individual items using other export methods.

Diane,
Good answer, but I was surprised you didn't give Robert your usual "Welcome
to Mac" link:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/index.html>

I posted it here in expectation that he (and others) will find it useful.

 

[Diane Ross]

Good answer, but I was surprised you didn't give Robert your usual "Welcome
to Mac" link:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/index.html>

I posted it here in expectation that he (and others) will find it useful.

Thanks Ed!

If anyone has any additions that need to be added, be sure to let me know.

 

[robertyumd]

Ed, Diane, thank you for helping me and giving me the link for me to do more research. Thanks to your help, I opened Entourage 2008 and configured one Exchange mailbox, tonight I am downloading the 8GB mailbox from Exchange server.

Now I am doing some research to archive the 8GB emails using EagleFiler to make the mailbox less than 0.5 GB on Exchange. If you can offer some input, it will be appreciated for sure.

The second problem I need to solve is: the corrupted Entourage mailbox is 56 GB, and the actual emails is about 11 GB ( 8GB one mailbox, 1 GB for the second mailbox and 2 GB locally archived emails ), I do not know how it gets to be so large 56GB. I do not know how to retrieve the 2GB locally archvied emails from the corrupted Entourage database. I have 47 GB of free space on the hard drive, and I have a 500 GB external hard drive for this computer.
The previous support person did not help to archive all emails from Exchange ( 8GB mailbox is huge to me on Exchange ), and I recently joined the company. Now I need to solve the problem.

Thanks again for your help and your time helping me out.

Robert

 

[Diane Ross]

The second problem I need to solve is: the corrupted Entourage mailbox is 56
GB, and the actual emails is about 11 GB ( 8GB one mailbox, 1 GB for the
second mailbox and 2 GB locally archived emails ), I do not know how it gets
to be so large 56GB. I do not know how to retrieve the 2GB locally archvied
emails from the corrupted Entourage database. I have 47 GB of free space on
the hard drive, and I have a 500 GB external hard drive for this computer.

Sometimes when Entourage makes the copy for the rebuild, the original and
copy get merged resulting in a database that's twice the original. I've
never heard of such a huge expansion like this.

I seriously doubt this database could be rebuilt. Check the copy that was
named something like this "[Backed up 6-02-2009 13.35]". Inside this folder
is a file named database. What size is it?

 

[robertyumd]

Diane, Ed, thank you again for your expertise and offering your help.

I thought that I posted the follow-up after reading Diane's post, but it did not get posted last time.

I checked this computer's folder "[Backed up 6-01-2009…, but there is no database there at all, the folder is less than 1 MB. Now I do not want to worry about the corrupted database.

Can you give some help on archiving Exchange emails from Entourage 2008 please, or refer me to some expert, or certain tech forum please?
Thanks to your help, the new Entourage main identity already downloaded all 8GB of emails from Exchange server. Now I need to archive emails and make the mailbox to be less than 2 GB on the Exchange server. I purchased EagleFiler about 2 weeks ago for archiving at somebody's suggestion.

My goals on archiving emails are:
1. To make mailbox less than 2GB on Exchange server
2. To make mailbox less than 2GB in the local Entourage database. Previously the other support person archived emails from Entourage to a local folder, but it is still part of the Entourage database on the MAC. Now I have EagleFiler, I hope that the Entourage database will be the same size as the mailbox on Exchange.
3. To make archived emails to be easily accessible. Previously Entourage archived emails can not be sorted by from, sorted by sent/received date, and it did not show up the subject line in the locally archived emails.
4. It will be wonderful if the EagleFiler archived emails can be copied and be viewed easily on another MAC computer with Entourage 2008.

Your help is very much appreciated.

Robert

 

[rlbnyc]

To all (especially Ed Kimball + Diane Ross)

As of this morning I have a problem with my mail program Entourage X (Mac). When I opened it I got the message that the database needed to be rebuilt. I found how to do this and opened Entourage while holding down the 'Option' key. I chose the basic rebuild from the dialog box, and the progress bar never started moving and the entire program froze, requiring a Force Quit from the Apple menu.

Since my main object is to retrieve my e-mail correspondence rather than any allegiance to Entourage, I tried importing my Entourage data into Mail. This did not work.

Then I looked up, via Google, this thread that seemed to deal with the problem in later versions of Entourage. I'm not sure how to proceed in Entourage X, however. Can you provide a step-by-step process for rebuilding the database? And, I hope, being able to import the information into another e-mail program.

I'm a rank amateur in these matters.

My computer is an Intel iMac running OS 10.5.7. The Entourage database is 3.22 GB; there is 132 GB free space on my startup hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Rachel in Brooklyn

 

[Ed Kimball]

To all (especially Ed Kimball + Diane Ross)

As of this morning I have a problem with my mail program Entourage X (Mac).
When I opened it I got the message that the database needed to be rebuilt. I
found how to do this and opened Entourage while holding down the 'Option' key.
I chose the basic rebuild from the dialog box, and the progress bar never
started moving and the entire program froze, requiring a Force Quit from the
Apple menu.

Since my main object is to retrieve my e-mail correspondence rather than any
allegiance to Entourage, I tried importing my Entourage data into Mail. This
did not work.

Then I looked up, via Google, this thread that seemed to deal with the problem
in later versions of Entourage. I'm not sure how to proceed in Entourage X,
however. Can you provide a step-by-step process for rebuilding the database?
And, I hope, being able to import the information into another e-mail program.

I'm a rank amateur in these matters.

My computer is an Intel iMac running OS 10.5.7. The Entourage database is 3.22
GB; there is 132 GB free space on my startup hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Rachel in Brooklyn

Rachel,
If the Rebuild program froze, either the database is so corrupted that the
rebuild could not repair it, or you don't have enough space on your hard
drive to complete the rebuild.

Use the File>Get Info command in the finder to determine how big your hard
drive is, how much space it has left, and how big your database is. With
that information Diane or one of the MVPs might be able to help you.
I wish I could help you more, but I haven't used Entourage X in years. It is
truly obsolete.
Ed.