On 1/29/02 8:35 AM, "Jim Robertson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Greg and Diane, > > Thanks for your continued help. > > Exploring a bit more, I find that the most recent copy of my database on my > desktop Mac, dated 1/17, is ALSO corrupt and cannot be rebuilt using the > typical rebuild. What happens when I attempt to rebuild the database on the > desktop Sawtooth AGP-G4 is exactly what happens on my Ti PowerBook, namely > the progress bar doesn't make it to the last message before jumping from the > compacting step to the optimization step, and then nearing the end of > optimization a dialog appears saying the database probably cannot be > rebuilt. (I have not done an advanced rebuild on the AGP-G4 database to see > if it discards everything since 12/9; I assume it would). > > So, I'm guessing that the database corruption didn't happen because I > force-quit Entourage on January 26th, but rather that something happened > (probably December 9) that didn't become evident at the time, and which only > causes problems when I try to rebuild the database. > > Therefore, it appears that to get a GOOD database I'll have to export all > messages from December 9 onward from the CORRUPT database to desktop mbox > files (one folder at a time) and reimport them into the rebuilt database. > > My concern now is that perhaps one of the messages from December 9 or 10 is > ITSELF what makes the entire database corrupt, and that the act of > exporting/importing messages from the corrupt database to the rebuilt but > truncated one will corrupt the new database. > > Would you suggest I do a typical rebuild after importing each folder's worth > of messages into the new database? > > Since the program functioned apparently normally from 12/9 to 1/26 without > any obvious problems, would you suggest that users do a routine rebuild > frequently so that if something like this happens again, the damage would > affect only one or two days worth of work? My concern here is that, even > assuming I can retrieve all my messages, I've obviously lost their links to > each other, which is one of the reasons I'm USING Entourage instead of > Apple's "Mail" program (the other, of course is because I anticipate being > able to maintain a single calendar and address database on Macs and Palm > once MS releases a conduit). > > Entourage is a great program, and I'm delighted with its performance despite > being smacked by this database corruption. I'm trying to fit the way I work > to its foibles. > > > > Jim Robertson Jim, First of all, let me just ask that you either reply to the sender, or the list, but not both. For example, I received two copies of your message and one would have sufficed! :-) Anyway, back to your problem. This is a good lesson for everyone in making frequent backups! I just did mine before replying to this message. In your corrupted database, if you can read the messages ok (not missing any text, or parts of other messages show up where they don't belong) exporting them to an mbox (drag to folder) should take care of any corruption. The mbox files are really just text files containing the messages. If you have any attachments associated with the messages, I would save those separately and delete them from the message. If you haven't done it, make a backup copy of your most recent good database. I would opt for the easiest thing first. That is, try to import all your messages. Only if it doesn't rebuild ok, then I would go back to the backup copy and try one folder (or one message) at a time. But, I suspect if you export it to mbox, it shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about the database and mbox formats may be able to offer more information about this. I'm no expert. Good luck. If all else fails, I would probably copy any important messages to some other text file or word file, forget the not so important messages, and move on. --Greg -- 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/>
