On 3/6/02 9:30a, "Allen Watson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On or near 3/2/02 9:58 PM, Deborah Shadovitz at [EMAIL PROTECTED] observed: > >> This is a new error to me. >> OS X 10.1.3, day 3 >> Ti 400, 700+ ram >> >> On launch: The action cannot be completed. Mail error. >> Symptoms: >> 1. No preview appears in the Preview Pane. Message can be read by >> double-clicking the message. >> 2. No buttons work. But all commands with via menus or keys. >> >> Turning prevew off and on didn't work, several times. >> Same with all menus. >> Tried removing Prefs. No help. >> Rebooting, of course. No help. >> Have 2 identities. Same on both. >> >> Any ideas from the team, please? >> > Going back to your original message... For the record, I did not say that in the original, quoted above. I said that offlist to you after 3-5 help messages detailing all that I tried. >I'd hate to see you abandon Entourage, > because (to me) it's the best mail client out there, <especially> on OS X. That was my feeling - until I have had these two failures and no help on the list. (The one response I got missed the mark.) Thank you for responding to this as it may help others. I comes too last to help me; I already lost over 10 hours of work time to this issue in addition to the days of lost time last failure in X. > This definitely sounds like database corruption to me. Thank you! That's what I'd been saying all along. > Your later message > indicates that you did a rebuild. I hope you preserved the original > database; did you? (When you do a rebuild, it renames the original to "old > database", so unless you deleted it, it will still be there in your > Microsoft User Data identity folder.) The reason I ask is that you say you > "tried the rebuild only to make it all unreadable". That implies that after > the rebuild you could not even open the database?? Or what? (Please explain) > If you still have the "Old Database" file, all is not lost. I've been thru so much that I don't recall. I think it was the last time that this happened.. This time I did not even bother to try to open it. When it failed I did not use it. It's size was way too small to even look at it. I deleted it and kept the old one. I'm not new to rebuilds; did it as needed in 9 and they always worked. But in X both Rebuild and Advanced Rebuild didn't work. A month ago I had my database go bad on my and the Advanced Rebuild lost all email for a 3 month period. I'd had to open an older back up as another user, go thru every folder and grab that mail and then put it into my rebuilt user database. > You can still go > back to that and try an Advanced Rebuild, and that is what I would recommend > next. Delete the results of your first rebuild (if they are indeed > completely unusable). Rename the "old" files back to their original names, > without "old". Then, launch Entourage with the option key held down, and > select the advanced or complex rebuild. When I did not get help for a week, with an answer to whether an Advanced Rebuild is ok in X, I could not earn a living. So I did things my own way instead. I did not risk losing hours to the Advanced Rebuild only to risk the lost message hell. > This will result in <some> data loss; mainly, you will lose some of the > links betweeen things, such as incoming messages linked to your replies. But > you will keep all the messages, contacts, rules, etc. So if the ordinary > rebuild failed, this should fix things. I don't care about those links. But months of lost messages that include jobs and contract negotiations were not ok to lose. > There have been one or two instances I've heard of of a non-recoverable > corruption in the database, but those are rare instances. I think you should > be able to recover things with the advanced rebuild. As I said, I've had the non-working rebuild. In fact, 4 times, each time going back to the original database. I kept that, although not willing to go thru the hell again, in case you want to inspect it. > PLEASE REPLY TO THE LIST. No problem. I'd written to you guys offlist because I was not being read on the list despite much time spent documenting the issue in the hopes it would help others. Here is what I did. I aliased my pre-rebuild database to the identities folder but manually added a main user. Trashed prefs to bring up the user-choice dialog. Started as the new main user. Was able to switch to the corrupted user. As I said, it opened that way, but not fully functioning. I dragged ever folder to a folder on my desktop, making .mbox files. Then I switched back to the new main identity and dragged each .mbox into the new user id. I restarted frequently as I did this to be sure it was working. As I did this, I simplified my folder structure. I also removed many unnecessary messages and attachments. (I had entire books, chapter by chapter, version by version, in their for legal tracking reasons.) Then I did a screen shot of my account info and my categories. And Exported the contact file. (Wish I could have learned to export the Categories and Account info.) Quitting again, I removed the old user alias. Launching again, I added a few Categories back. I then had to repair every Rule because the rules all pointed to incorrect folders. I also imported the Contacts. But I didn't add back the Categories or about 10 accounts yet. Keeping it simple this time. That got me back up and working. I have reason to believe the last Advanced Rebuild didn't really work well, which is what caused this one. (I should add that my hard drive structure checked out OK in each case and that I never even hit 700 mgs in my database.) As I said, I documented this all on the list so others may learn from it if they have the same problem. Perhaps you would be willing to comment this so users can know what is right to do and should not be done, that may help others. Thanks. -- 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/>
