Hi, For the third time in one month, my Entourage is uploading 1,698 messages that I've already received!!!!
I've got a MacBook and am using Entourage version 11.4. Can anyone help?? Many thanks, Suzanne in Chicago On 7/2/10 5:22 PM, "Karen Kreps" <[email protected]> wrote: > Yesterday, I spent 6 hours trying to rebuild my Microsoft Office for Mac > 2008 Entourage database, 2 of them on the phone with Microsoft. > > All is now resolved, but I thought I should share what I learned and did so > others might avoid having the same headache. > > The problem began when I could not display the calendar in calendar view. I > kept getting errors saying that Entourage could not display the content > because of an error, but id didn¹t give an error number or any useful info. > My email, addresses and task list all functioned okay. > > I used the database utility (starting Entourage with Option held down to > start the utility). > > It tested and told me problems were found with the database and I should > rebuild it. It took nearly an hour to get through step 5/5, and at the > end, the spinning wheel came up and stayed up. There was a message saying > the database was being rebuilt, but no confirmation came that it was > complete. I used Command/Option/escape to see if the program had crashed and > it told me it was not responding. > > A week earlier, I had a problem where the database also got corrupted and > would not rebuild. Then, I searched on Google and learned that that could > happen due to a lack of free space on the hard drive. I had under 20 GB > free, so, during the earlier incident, after I deleted about 10 GB and the > database rebuilt. > > But this time, yesterday, I did drastic deletions to clear another 10 GB and > the problem persisted. I quit the database utility and repeated the above > steps 3 times to no avail. > > Finally, I found a phone number to call for Microsoft Support: 800 936-5700. > They answered surprising fast and luckily they told me I had one incident > remaining on my support program so I would not be charged the $49 such calls > normally cost. > > I then spoke with a tech named Jonathan. > > He had me do the following: > > In Finder, go to users/[my home directory)/library/preferences and delete > all files that included (the asterik is a wildcard that stands for > anything): > > com.microsoft.* > com.entourage.* > > And to delete the microsoft folder that was in that path. > > I then had to restart my computer and rebuilt the database. > > It again went through step 5/5 and the spinning wheel kept spinning. > Jonathan made sure I was running no other programs and he didn¹t want me to > use Command/Option/escape to see if the program had crashed. We got off the > phone and I waited. After 2 hours, I called again. This time I was on hold > for 30 mins, got disconnected and called again. Someone else (since Jonathan > was on another call) told me to keep waiting and to avoid opening other > programs for that would slow the process down further. It took 2.5 hours, > but finally it said the rebuild was successful and, when I opened > Entrourage, my calendar displayed correctly. > > I learned the reason the rebuild took so long was that my database was > nearly 22 GB. Normally they are <5 Gb. You can see the size by going in > Finder to /documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 identities/Identity > 1/database and then command click/get info. > > Jonathan later called me back and told me that what made my database so > large was probably due to having many old saved attachments. I deleted them > all by going to documents/Microsoft User Data/Saved Attachments. I also > deleted many folders within that directory. When I was done, my database was > 2.5 GB. > > I asked how I could back up my database in the future. Jonathan said to > manually go to File/Export and that would create a file called identity.rge. > I saved that to my hard drive and made sure the file got backed up as part > of my regular backup of documents to an off-site repository. > > I see there are different, more complex instructions for backing up > Entourage here: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/backup.html. > > Hope this helps you avoid the headache I had. > -- > YouTalk mailing list > List information: http://nine.pairlist.net/support_options/list.html > List moderator: [email protected], [email protected] > To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe -- YouTalk mailing list List information: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/support_options/list.html List moderator: [email protected], [email protected] To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
