Relocate an Entourage DB file to a remote drive?

[PVader]

Howdy,

I have a bunch of Mac users who are laptop users as well. Office:2004
stores it's Users Data Folder always in ~/Documents/Microsoft User
Data. In there are many folders but what I'm interested in is the
Database file that Entourage uses to store Archived Mail (Folders on My
Computer). Which is cool until your laptop gets stolen, broken, lost..
etc.. you get the picture. So all that 'Archived Mail' is also lost
with it. Bummer losing years worth of email!

Outlook (the old Classic Version) allowed a user to store, in addition,
to create multiple 'Personal Folders' where ever the user wanted.
Typically in a network volume that gets backed up so the event that a
laptop is gone. The Archived email is still there.

I've tried to relocated this Database file to somewhere else manually
and created an alias back to it's default position. Was good until I
restarted the Mac and then Entourage comes up with 'Cannot locate
Database File" with options to verify, rebuild, compact. Any of these
options bomb out obviously cause the Database file is not where
Entourage expects it to be.

Has anyone been successfull in moving an Entourage DB file to safer
location other that the local disk?
Anyone have ideas on backup of this DB file?
We've tried Retrospect with no luck. It's great if you are the only
user but I manage about 45 mac users. Plus they are creatives and can't
be bothered and annoyed when the backup occurs .. You know

Help!!!

And thanks.

-p@

 

[mmmmark]

If they are networked to a server, you can create an alias with the exact
same name that will point to the database on a server elsewhere. It sounds
like you did this, but be sure you you stop the Database Daemon which is
running in the background. You can't move the database when this little
number is running. The only problem with this method is that they they do
not have email locally on their computer when they take it home (in the case
of the laptops).

What if you left the database on their computer, but backed it up regularly
so in the unlikely event of data loss (or notebook loss) you have all but a
day/week/etc.

That is what I do with my home computer and so far (knock on wood) it has
served me well.

Good luck!
-Mark