What you were told was total nonsense by someone who didn't know his ass from his elbow, to put it bluntly. Since he confessed to knowing nothing about the Mac, you should have asked to speak to someone who did. Or write here. Or read the online Help. Or the ReadMe that comes with the CD, Or read the info on the MacTopia website. Or search the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Or ask on the Entourage news group. There's lots and lots about database corruption, and how to fix it. Start here:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/library/feature_articles/ent/t_rebuild_databas e.asp> which is found directly from the main Entourage page on the Mac Office page: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/ All databases get corrupted. Size has almost nothing to do with it. People have had much larger Entourage databases, although size does slow things down. (The limit for a file on the Mac is 2 GB.) Entourage provides a simple and outstandingly effective way of fixing it: just hold down the option key at launch. (I'd suggest that you go straight to the Advanced Rebuild to save time, since you're going to need it.) If the MS tech person didn't know that, he/she should be fired or re-assigned to some other job. This makes me very upset. Calls about Entourage should not be assigned to someone who doesn't know Entourage. That';s plain stupid. And he/should know how to find out, or put you in touch with someone who does. Almost everything you were told was crap. On 11/3/01 3:53 PM, "Adam Boettiger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Yesterday I had a discouraging experience with MS support and wanted to see > if anyone else has experienced the same issue. > > It seems that when the Entourage database gets really large there is a high > possibility for it to become corrupted. Unlike Eudora, when the ER database > becomes corrupted there is very little you can do to recover data from it, > aside from trashing it and going back to a previously backed up copy that is > not corrupted. Total bullshit, and totally wrong. > I have a lot of email on ER and my messages file was about 385MB in size. > The database became corrupted yesterday and I paid $35 for the support call > to MS to see what I could do to fix it and recover my email. Ask for your money back. I mean it. It was frankly criminal to take your money. > > I knew the call was going to go bad when the tech told me "We don't really > support the Mac OS here". <G> > Nobody's asking them to support the Mac OS, just an MS product. > We went through a series of diagnostics together on the phone and he came to > the same conclusion that I did initially - that my ER database had become > corrupted. He advised me that my only option was to trash the Identities > folder and let the program recreate a new one. NO, NO, NO!!! Rebuild the database. Everyone has to do this from time to time. What is that idiot's name? > > When I asked him what could cause an ER database to become corrupted, he > advised me that it usually happens when the file gets too big. Nonsense. > "How big is > too big?" I asked. "It depends on what the configuration is on your machine > - how much ram, processor speed, etc." he said. Nonsense. That will affect speed, and it is true that if you have no spare hard disk space, you will be unable to perform certain operations. But it doesn't corrupt anything. >"So let me understand you > correctly," I said, "You know that the database gets corrupted when the file > gets too large, but you don't know the optimum size to keep it down to so I > can prevent this from happening again. So I'm just supposed to keep using > the product until the database becomes corrupted again, then reinstall from > a backup to recover my data? Somehow this doesn't sound very efficient to > me." He's just an ignoramus. > > Folks, I love Entourage. In fact I just paid for Office X and will use > Entourage X. But am I wrong to assume that the response I got above was not > really worth $35 for a support call? No, you were not wrong. Get a refund. > > There has to be a better way to prevent the database file from becoming > corrupted in ER. Fortunately for me, I backup to CD-R regularly, so only > lost about a week's worth of email, but it seems like this would be a pretty > big issue. You can't protect it, But you an fix it easily. read the article I linked you to. > > Anyone else figure out a fix for preventing it from becoming corrupted? Or > is there a size limit that we should start archiving at to prevent this from > happening? MS support was unable to tell me. > You should probably start archiving when you get above 150 MB, as a rough estimate, but that's for performance reasons, not to "protect" against corruption. You can give it more RAM if you have it, instead. you can get an archiver, such as eMessage Archiver. Or you can just drag mail folders to your hard disk to make MBOX text files, then delete the folders from Entourage. That will slim it down. Anyway, if you haven't trashed your identity yet, switch back to it and rebuild it with an Advanced rebuild. This makes me angry. -- Paul Berkowitz -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
