Recovering deleted files

D

Diane Ross

The subject of lost files comes up often on this list. Often they files are
just moved to the wrong location, but sometimes users have deleted the
files. Below are some recommendations for file recovery software that might
help if used in a timely manner.

Listed in no particular order. Recommendations come from Mac users.

FileSalvage
<http://www.subrosasoft.com>

VirtualLab
<http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/mac.html>

Data Rescue
<http://lookleap.com/prosofteng.com/a1>

Each product offers a free demo so you can see if purchase would be
warranted.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has used any of these
products to recover their Entourage data.

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

Diane Ross said:
I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has used any of these
products to recover their Entourage data.
Click to expand...

The problem is that they all work on files,
E-mails, event, etc are stored in a database in Entourage. You could use
these apps to recover then enture database, but I don;t see how you
could use them to recover individual e-mails, events or contacts you
would have deleted by mistake :-\


Corentin
 
B

Bruce Young 88 sbc

Valid point.

The Entourage data is in one BIG file at:
/Users/xxxxxxxxx/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/Main
Identity/Database

I have used Data Rescue II to recover accidentally deleted files. Some come
back, some are already gone into the realm of 'over-written'. But for data
files marked as "OK", reliable recovery is good.

But back to the email issue.
Unless one of the MS technical folks knows of a way, the only way I would
know to recover deleted emails is as follows:

1) IF YOU HAVE NOT COMPRESSED or REBUILT the Entourage DB, then the MS tech
folks might (or not) have a way, since presumably the deleted email is still
in the DB file somewhere. They would have to address this point.

2) For us regular folks -- Make regular backups of the DB file. (I then
compress them either via ZIP or SITX so they don't take as much space.)
Assuming you have an older DB to use as your get-old-mail-from file:
To recover:
(a) temporally move/rename the current Identity DB file to something else,
(b) plop your slightly older DB file into the Identities folder (NOT
overwriting the new/current one).
(c ) Then find your desired email(s) and DRAG it as an EML file onto the
desktop. This will preserve all the dates and the native format.
(d) now that you have gotten all the old mails you want, Delete from
Identities the older DB that you just used
(e) rename or copy back in the latest current DB that you saved earlier in
this process.
(f) Now drag those EML files into an appropriate folder in your Entourage
folder structure. Just drag straight from Desktop onto the desired folder on
the left side of the Entourage window.

Of course, this only works if you have saved an earlier version of your
Entourage DB.

-Best.
 
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