All contents of folder temporarily disappear when I move one email

[mrpooh]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
Processor: Power PC
Email Client: pop

When I move one email from one folder to another folder (whether it is to the trash folder or to a named folder that I created), all of the emails within all folders will temporarily disappear from view. If I close the Mail Window and then open it up again, everything is back in view again. This just started happening a few days ago. I have been using Entourage 2004 for 2 years without having this problem before.

Any clues?

I rebuilt the database and that resulted in some strange effects in of itself -- old emails long ago deleted showed up again!

 

[Diane Ross]

I rebuilt the database and that resulted in some strange effects in of itself
-- old emails long ago deleted showed up again!

Sounds like a bad rebuild. Did you delete the copy rebuild made? It's best
to work from the original database rather than a rebuilt copy.

Make a duplicate in the Finder first as additional backup. A rebuild does
make a duplicate, but sometimes in the process the original and backup get
merged resulting in total disaster. It's rare but it happens.

How much free space on your hd? Rebuilds take a lot of extra space in
addition to the 10% you need for free space.

 

[mrpooh]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure what happened. I do know that I have plenty of free hard drive space.

I fixed up the display of the emails (deleted the old emails that cropped back up again), backed up and trashed the extraneous backups to the User folder that had been created, and started again (I was prompted to select the database upon start up). So far, I am not having the problems I had before. Tomorrow could be another day... Perhaps the rebuild helped? I know the rebuild did something, as the file size of the Main User Database has decreased by about half the size, some perhaps there was some cleaning and streamlining that happened?

 

[Diane Ross]

I fixed up the display of the emails (deleted the old emails that cropped back
up again), backed up and trashed the extraneous backups to the User folder
that had been created, and started again (I was prompted to select the
database upon start up). So far, I am not having the problems I had before.
Tomorrow could be another day... Perhaps the rebuild helped? I know the
rebuild did something, as the file size of the Main User Database has
decreased by about half the size, some perhaps there was some cleaning and
streamlining that happened?

Entourage does have what's called "wasted space" after you delete. Entourage
uses that by overwriting new messages as they come in. Over time the delete
and new match up and the size will stay fairly stable.

If you compress the database then the size will be much smaller since it
gets rid of the deleted messages. I like to think of the 'wasted space' as a
good thing. It's a partition you keep using over and over without writing
your database file to blocks all over your drive.

I would backup often and you might want to consider moving into a new
Identity.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/backup_articles.html>

How to manually move your data. (when import fails and/or you need to move
to a new Identity same version or revert to an older version)

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/manual_install.html>

One last tip. Since you are still using Panther, I advise refreshing your OS
files by downloading the last combo updater for Panther and running it.
Doing so overwrites potentially problem-causing files. Combo updaters will
install on the same version as they¹re applying‹no need to roll back or do a
clean install.

Mac OS X Update 10.3.8 (Combo)
<http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosxupdate1038
combo.html>

 

[mrpooh]

Greetings again. Thanks for the additional tips and links. I followed some of the steps. I think things may be fine for now, but not after another little wave of burps:

An initial check for integrity showed no problems.
However, when I tried to export everything as MBOX files, a report said there was one email causing problems. So I proceded to delete saved emails and empty folders and suspicious emails wherever I could.
I quit, and restarted, and checked for integrity again and NOW it indicated that there WERE problems. Strange, eh? And when I started Entourage again, the folders were not displaying things properly. All the usual signs of database corruption, and all I did was DELETE some emails

So I did another rebuild and then did some more cleaning out of saved emails, and deleted the emails that mysteriously re-appeared, and this time the integrity checked out and so did the MBOX export.

Of course, I have now backed things up in different ways.

And FYI, I have been running OS 10.3.9.

Thanks again, with fingers crossed...

 

[Diane Ross]

And FYI, I have been running OS 10.3.9.

Just to be clear, even though you are running 10.3.9, running the 10.3.9
combo is a good thing. It refreshes files. Think of it as a quick trip to
the spa.

Glad to hear you verified your database. You can feel more confident now
that you have cleared the problems.