More fun with contacts...

R

Ron Price

Okay, the deleting thing notwithstanding, I am now fairly regularly able to
identify situations where:

Computer A adds a contact to multiple projects (projects are added at the
time of creation or close enough to one another that I don't think that
computer A is syncing in between, but I could be wrong.)

Computer B syncs and gets the contact; a single contact associated with two
projects

Computer C syncs and gets TWO copies of the contact, one associated with
each project.

The only difference I can see for sure between B and C (other than their
sync times, which I can assume are not the same) is that computer C may have
had a contact already, not associated with any project, that shares a name
and e-mail address with the new contact (which results in three copies of
the person in computer C's address book).

This won't work at all. Please help, anyone...

....Ron
 
D

Dave Cortright

Okay, the deleting thing notwithstanding, I am now fairly regularly able to
identify situations where:

Computer A adds a contact to multiple projects (projects are added at the
time of creation or close enough to one another that I don't think that
computer A is syncing in between, but I could be wrong.)

Computer B syncs and gets the contact; a single contact associated with two
projects

Computer C syncs and gets TWO copies of the contact, one associated with
each project.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that doesn't sound right. If you can, copy this script into the script
editor on each machine, select the duplicate contacts in Entourage, and then
run the script. I hope you don't have contacts with the same GUID on the
same machine. That would be very bad. If you don't, then pick one of the
contacts and delete it, and then assign the other one to the project of the
one that you just deleted. That should get the same contact with the same
GUID into both projects.

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set cc to the selection
set theGUIDS to ""
repeat with c in cc
set theGUIDS to (theGUIDS & (GUID of c) as string) & return
end repeat
display dialog "The GUIDS:" default answer text 1 thru -2 of theGUIDS
end tell
 
R

Ron Price

Do I need to do this just on the machines with dupes, or is there something
I should do to the others?

Thanks, Dave...
 
R

Ron Price

Okay, never mind... I get it.

The GUIDs are the same for all the contacts throughout the network... The
machine with the dupes definitely has them with the same GUID.

Why is it bad, and how very bad is it?

....Ron
 
D

Dave Cortright

Do I need to do this just on the machines with dupes, or is there something
I should do to the others?
Click to expand...

Start with the dupes only. If you want to see which contact is where, the
GUID will tell you. Remember, Entourage doesn't care if all of the user
editable fields within a contact are the same as the other. It uses the GUID
to distinguish one unique contact from another.
 
D

Dave Cortright

Okay, never mind... I get it.

The GUIDs are the same for all the contacts throughout the network... The
machine with the dupes definitely has them with the same GUID.

Why is it bad, and how very bad is it?
Click to expand...

It's bad because there's clearly a bug in Entourage if it's creating items
duplicate GUIDs. Still, try doing like I said and deleting one of the dupes
and then assigning the project to that contact. Maybe that will fix it. If
it doesn't, I'm sorry to say that I'm out of ideas.
 
R

Ron Price

Okay; deleting the dupe from the machine where it appeared twice seems to do
the trick... Now, if it's a "cut the blue wire" thing where the contact
would have disappeared off of the other machines if I'd picked the other
one, I obviously can't say.

Are bugs of this sort reported to Microsoft via this newsgroup? I have a
great interest in them knowing about this kind of thing; I just bought
Office upgrades for the sole purpose of doing exactly this thing, so if it
turns out to not work, I want them to have it on their fix-it list...

Thanks again, Dave.
 
D

Dave Cortright

Okay; deleting the dupe from the machine where it appeared twice seems to do
the trick... Now, if it's a "cut the blue wire" thing where the contact
would have disappeared off of the other machines if I'd picked the other
one, I obviously can't say.

Are bugs of this sort reported to Microsoft via this newsgroup? I have a
great interest in them knowing about this kind of thing; I just bought
Office upgrades for the sole purpose of doing exactly this thing, so if it
turns out to not work, I want them to have it on their fix-it list...
Click to expand...

Great, sounds like things are OK for now. Let us know if you run into any
more issues. I'll make sure this bug gets passed on to Microsoft. You can
use the "Send Feedback" item in the Help menu if you want as well.
 
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