All repeating to dos lost after applying12.1.7 update to 12.1.5 version

[Throski]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I lost all my repeating to dos in Entourage when I upgraded from 12.1.5 to 12.1.7. I only have one remaining to do item and it was completed months ago. Except for the one that remains, all my to dos were repeating ones. Is there a way to get them back besides restoring Office and my current identity from a backup? Thanks.

 

[Diane Ross]

I lost all my repeating to dos in Entourage when I upgraded from 12.1.5 to
12.1.7. I only have one remaining to do item and it was completed months ago.
Except for the one that remains, all my to dos were repeating ones. Is there a
way to get them back besides restoring Office and my current identity from a
backup? Thanks.

Don't worry about the Office install, just use a backup of your Identity and
see if they show up? (obviously use a copy of your backup to be extra
careful)

I hope it's not a Time Machine backup.

 

[Throski]

While I was booted from my backup volume, which still contains the pending recurring tasks, I dragged them to the desktop, then transferred them to my current boot volume, the one where Office 2008 has been upgraded to 12.1.7. Opening them in the Finder on the current system apparently resulted in their being added back into the current identity in Entourage 12.1.7. I don't think trying to use this process to recover all the completed instances of these recurring tasks is crucial enough to be worthwhile in my case. Have you determined whether failure to migrate recurring tasks is a consistent result of upgrades from 12.1.5 to 12.1.7? Has anyone else reported lost data as a result of the upgrade? Thanks.

 

[Diane Ross]

hile I was booted from my backup volume, which still contains the pending
recurring tasks, I dragged them to the desktop, then transferred them to my
current boot volume, the one where Office 2008 has been upgraded to 12.1.7.
Opening them in the Finder on the current system apparently resulted in their
being added back into the current identity in Entourage 12.1.7.

That's good news.

Has anyone else reported lost data as a
result of the upgrade? Thanks.

There was one other case reported of problems with data loss so far.
Definitely not a significant number so I would chalk this one up to unusual
things can happen during an update. That's why they always advise that you
backup before updating anything.

 

[Throski]

On 4/15/09 7:48 AM, "(e-mail address removed)"

wrote:

I hope it's not a Time Machine backup.

Why? I've never had any more trouble recovering an identity from a Time Machine backup than with any other backup. An extra restore process would be expected to retrieve an entire volume, of course, but that's to be expected with most incremental backup systems, isn't it?

 

[Diane Ross]

Why? I've never had any more trouble recovering an identity from a Time
Machine backup than with any other backup. An extra restore process would be
expected to retrieve an entire volume, of course, but that's to be expected
with most incremental backup systems, isn't it?

Time Machine backups of the Entourage database could be corrupted. I can
tell you from experience recovering data that it does corrupt the data.
Messages stored in tasks, events etc. All sorts of corruption making it
extremely difficult to get the data out.

Using Time Machine to backup Entourage basics:

It's advised by the developers not to let Time Machine backup your Entourage
database. If the database is copied while being used, the backup could be
corrupt. You can set the Time Machine to exclude the Microsoft User Data
folder and create an iCal event to copy it over at night while not in use so
you get one backup daily in Time Machine.

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2008/01/alternative_method_to_use_entourage_
and_time_machine.html>

 

[Diane Ross]

Would you be willing to to do some forensic analysis of your system by
running a special utility to see what went wrong?