Upgrading to Leopard - Finally

[Sonoran]

I have decided to upgrade to Leopard and I am planning on performing a
format & install. I am fairly new to Macs and I want to do this as
painlessly as possible.

I am currently running Entourage 2004. After installing Leopard &
reinstalling Entourage what files/folders do I need to backup &
restore so all my settings, emails, contacts, etc. are available?

 

[Michel Bintener]

There is no need to reinstall Entourage unless you choose to erase your hard
disk during the installation process. When installing Leopard, choose
Archive and Install instead; that method preserves your settings and
documents and migrates them to the new operating system. Your current system
(Tiger?) will be archived and put into a folder called Previous System,
which you can delete after a week or so when you've made sure you've got all
the system files you need. Basically, if you follow that procedure, you can
start up Entourage in Leopard and access your data as if nothing had ever
happened.

That being said, it can never hurt to perform backups of your vital folders.
See here for more details:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/index.html#db1>

I have decided to upgrade to Leopard and I am planning on performing a
format & install. I am fairly new to Macs and I want to do this as
painlessly as possible.

I am currently running Entourage 2004. After installing Leopard &
reinstalling Entourage what files/folders do I need to backup &
restore so all my settings, emails, contacts, etc. are available?

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[Diane Ross]

I have decided to upgrade to Leopard and I am planning on performing a
format & install. I am fairly new to Macs and I want to do this as
painlessly as possible.

There are three types of install options for Leopard:

Upgrade Mac OS X (the default upgrade method) I do not recommend this one.
Archive and Install
Erase and Install

If you do the "Erase & Install" you will have to re-install Office. Be sure
to update or you will get an error "This identity cannot be opened with this
version of Entourage". Once updated Entourage opens. There was a database
upgrade shortly after the CD release.

I am currently running Entourage 2004. After installing Leopard &
reinstalling Entourage what files/folders do I need to backup &
restore so all my settings, emails, contacts, etc. are available?

Whenever doing a major change like this, it's best to backup your User's
folder. Get an external drive. You can use this as your Time Machine drive
after the installation.

Cheers and Welcome to Mac! I have a few tips and links posted to help new
users here:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/index.html>

 

[Sonoran]

Thanks to both of you for your help. I do hav a Firewire external
drive & plan on cloning my HD with Super Duper first. That will get
my User Database stuff. Are there other settings/preferences on my HD
that I should know about with Entourage?

 

[Diane Ross]

Thanks to both of you for your help. I do hav a Firewire external
drive & plan on cloning my HD with Super Duper first. That will get
my User Database stuff. Are there other settings/preferences on my HD
that I should know about with Entourage?

SuperDuper will get it all. Entourage stores it's data in the Microsoft User
Data folder. It sounds like you are doing an "Erase & Install" meaning you
will install Office fresh. Be sure to restart after each step. See this page
for help.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/install_office2008.html>

Let Entourage open and create a new Microsoft User Data folder. Now you can
drag over your individual files from your backup like scripts and Identity
folder. Some users have gotten bogus database errors when dragging over the
Microsoft User Data folder.

Rather than trying to use your old Spotlight caches, let your new system
recreate.

As far as preferences go, you can drag over the ones in your User's folder
with Microsoft in the name. Your custom dictionary file is one that you
would want. It's in the Microsoft folder in User's preferences.

If you open the Junk Mail Filter, you can copy the safe domains to paste
into Entourage if they don't carry over.

Since the copy you are making with SuperDuper is bootable you can always
boot up to see what you need to copy over. Migrating over data can bring
over old files and/or corrupted files. I would go a clean as you can with
the process. The change to Leopard is a bigger change than the one from
Panther to Tiger.