My HD is only a few months old, i replaced the original as it started
to die. S.M.A.R.T reports the drive is OK and Drive Genius reports no
bad blocks.
Even new drives can go bad. It's good that you tested it.
Launching Entourage in a new user account seems to be OK and does not
show the the weird spacing between days/dates which I described
previously. Also if I copy my Microsoft User Data to my spare test OS
which is on another HD (just for issues like this) I do not see the
weird spacing between days/dates. This leads me to believe that
something in my user account may have been corrupted by the recent OS
upgrade (10.4.9) or by the recent Office update (10.3.3 (061214)). By
the way a recent HTML email from eBay also displays weird character
spacing.
I agree it's in your User's account. The Office update can be ruled out
because you used the same Office applications in the new User. This leaves
corrupt preferences, caches and conflict with another application like a
haxie.
Start up in your User with the shift key down to disable all applications.
If there is a conflict with an application your problem should go away. If
the problem exists, then it's your User's Library folder that has to be
holding the culprit.
Recently a user on the Entourage talk list had a problem with no shift H.
The culprit was a bad preference called com.markzware.FC5.FontDBWtSys. So
you see, the preference does not have to be an Office or OS prefs. Based on
this, I would say it's most likely a corrupt preference that is causing your
unusual problem.
Go into your home folder and take the ~/Library/Preferences folder, and put
all the files in there into a folder on your desktop called old_prefs. The
Finder will lock up when you move them out the first time. Force quit the
Finder. Now log out and back in, and you will see your Mac is now back to
defaults. Test Entourage , if it works, you know its one of the preference
files. Start with putting everything back in that starts with "com.apple"
and log out/in.
Slowly, a few preference files at a time, move the old ones back into place,
and log out and back in, then test. Rinse and repeat until you find the bad
preference.
Another suggestion: User Font Finagler purge your font caches:
<
http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/>
Trash the com.microsoft.browserfont.cache and tasmanbrowser.cache, which
will be found in your ~/Library/Caches.
What do think? Is there a solution apart from deleting my corrent user
account and using a new one?
Sometimes starting over is quicker and easier than tracking down a culprit.
That's a decision you will have to make.
Lastly for the moment what is the recommended maximum size for a
Microsoft User Data folder?
Personally, I like to keep mine less than 4 GB. Entourage 2004 has no limit,
but the larger databases can cause slowdowns and the more chances that a
problem can occur. If you keep attachments to a minimum I personally feel
that also creates a better environment for the database. There are scripts
that will remove attachments and leave a note in the message so you really
won't loose any functionality. Se this page for ways to improve performance:
<
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/performance.html>
--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<
http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>
