Mass deletion of public folder messages

[SpineyNorman]

Here's a scary one...

I have two users who reported that "all the email is gone from some of
the public folders" in the last two days. Both are using Entourage
2004 (11.3.3), and the mail was missing from public folders on our
Exchange 2003 (SP2) server that they were browsing. I checked it out
on a couple stations running Entourage, and also using Outlook. Big
piles of messages were indeed missing.

Luckily, I have our Exchange server configured to retain deleted items
for 30 days, so I just used the Recover Deleted Items feature in
Outlook. All the missing messages were sitting there, all having been
deleted at the same exact time - roughly the time that the user would
have clicked on the folder to browse it. This happened on many folders
- all of them folders browsed by these users. I restored all the
missing messages and had one of the users continue to browse, and sure
enough, more messages disappeared. I restored again, and have been
continuing to browse with this machine, but now it seems to be playing
nicely...

We've been operating with this basic configuration (server and
clients) for over a year, and I never seen anything like this. I'm
assuming that it has something to do with Entourage synchronizing the
folder, and something going terribly wrong.

Anybody have any ideas? The fact that any of our many Macs might be
ravaging our public folder store (at this very second) is making me
very queasy...

Thanks

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Here's a scary one...

I have two users who reported that "all the email is gone from some of
the public folders" in the last two days. Both are using Entourage
2004 (11.3.3), and the mail was missing from public folders on our
Exchange 2003 (SP2) server that they were browsing. I checked it out
on a couple stations running Entourage, and also using Outlook. Big
piles of messages were indeed missing.

Any chance they could have a corrupted Rule sending all the messages to
a "local" location and therefroe effectively deleting the messages from
the public folder?

Corentin

 

[SpineyNorman]

Any chance they could have a corrupted Rule sending all the messages to
a "local" location and therefroe effectively deleting the messages from
the public folder?

That was one of the first things I looked for. Neither machine has any
active rules (actually - no rules at all). I can't imagine what
mechanism could even be responsible for deleting messages on the
server, other than an explicit deletion (manual, rules-based, etc). It
seems like if there were an issue with the Entourage cache, the server
contents would take precedence. Regarding the cache, one of the users
had messages deleted from a folder that was synchronized (a Favorite),
and the other user was browsing a non-synchronized folder.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

That was one of the first things I looked for. Neither machine has any
active rules (actually - no rules at all).

Not even a Mailing List Manager ?
THen I don;t see what might have hapened.

I can't imagine what
mechanism could even be responsible for deleting messages on the
server, other than an explicit deletion (manual, rules-based, etc). It

Well it unfortunatey happens fairly often.
Rules set for Exchange accounts get confused when you rebuil the
database.
A rule set to move a message to a specific folder on the Exchange
account loses track of the folder during a rebuild and defaults to a
folder "in my computer" (usually the inbox).
The result is clear: when the rule enters in active, the e-mails are
moved to the local folder, effectively deleting it from the Exchange
folder.

Corentin

 

[SpineyNorman]

Not even a Mailing List Manager ?
THen I don;t see what might have hapened.

Nope. Neither user has any rules set, nor Mailing List Manager, and
Junk Mail Protection is turned off.

I don't get it either. If It didn't happen to two separate users in
short succession, and if I didn't see it happen with my own eyes, I'd
be skeptical. I'm beginning to wonder if it's something weird on the
server side. I've cross posted on an SBS newsgroup to see if there are
any thoughts over there.

A rule set to move a message to a specific folder on the Exchange
account loses track of the folder during a rebuild and defaults to a
folder "in my computer" (usually the inbox).
The result is clear: when the rule enters in active, the e-mails are
moved to the local folder, effectively deleting it from the Exchange
folder.

Ouch. I'll have to enforce a "no-rules" policy with Entourage users...

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Ouch. I'll have to enforce a "no-rules" policy with Entourage users...

The other option is to make sure people check the destination folders in
their rules after a rebuild.

Corentin

 

[Diane Ross]

I don't get it either. If It didn't happen to two separate users in
short succession, and if I didn't see it happen with my own eyes, I'd
be skeptical. I'm beginning to wonder if it's something weird on the
server side. I've cross posted on an SBS newsgroup to see if there are
any thoughts over there.

Two separate users indicates to me, that it's something on the server.

 

[Paul Williams]

This looks like the same problem I had in my post:

E2004: Public Folders posts to Entourage "Favourites" get deleted.

Of last month.

Does anyone have any updates on this? I can't place items in Public Folders
now, as Windows/Outlook users have also noticed items going missing...

Paul

 

[William Smith]

This looks like the same problem I had in my post:

E2004: Public Folders posts to Entourage "Favourites" get deleted.

Of last month.

Does anyone have any updates on this? I can't place items in Public Folders
now, as Windows/Outlook users have also noticed items going missing...

Hi Paul!

I'm not an Exchange Server administrator but if I were having this
problem with files on a file server then I would enable auditing on the
folder or volume where I'm seeing this problem. Auditing would record
"who" deleted the files and "when". Possibly such a feature exists in
Exchange Server.

A quick search of Google for "auditing Exchange Server" finds this at
the top of the list among other articles
<http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Importance-Auditing-Exchange-2003-Servers.html>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>