Thanks so much for trying to help me out of this dilemma. Since I still had the old files on my hard drive, I tried the typical rebuild again. I removed the "old" from their filenames and moved them back into the correct place in the "Main Identity" folder. As the database began compacting, the progress bar window indicated that there were 16,325 items. However, the progress bar didn't reach the end before the optimization phase began, and as this phase progressed the progress bar window indicated a total item count of approximately 12,100 items. Before it reached ITS conclusion, an alert dialog appeared saying that rebuild failed, and that the database probably couldn't be rebuilt. It offered to try an advanced rebuild (which is what led me to a database missing my last 1.5 months of email this morning).
Now for something weird: I tried launching Entourage from the original database AGAIN, and this time the launch proceeded normally, with all my mail accessible again! However, it seems clear there must be something wrong with this file set. Any suggestions what I should do now? For the moment, I've decided to use the new (advance rebuilt) database that I started using this morning, and I'm leaving copies of all incoming mail on my ISP's server, but of course my outgoing mail is accumulating in this truncated database and will be somewhat harder to merge into the original if I can get the original into a state where I'm comfortable using it. Is there some export routine that will allow me to move everything OUT of the damaged (but now openable) database, then back into a new one? Since I know the date at which the rebuild failed (December 10) is there any sense in going back into the original database and examining all messages in all folders that have that date, and deleting them all or doing something else with them: i.e., is there some way of identifying "problem" messages in the database? Once again, thanks so much for trying to help! Oh, I should note that I DID find a reasonably new database on my other computer. The last time I copied it from my G4 TiBook to my AGP Sawtooth G4 was January 17, so I have another copy of the database that's missing only about 9 days of mail. The reason that this copy of the database wasn't opening when I launched Entourage on the desktop G4 was because I used a beta copy of "Synchronize Pro" to move the files there from the Ti Book, and aparently my beta copy didn't resolve aliases to put the transferred files into their proper position on the target "network" drive, running Synchronize Pro from the Ti PowerBook. Jim Robertson -- -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
