Desperately seeking help

O

otifrank

I am an Exchange 2003 admin with little to no background in Macs. (I'm
PC centric) I have a situation that has recently developed in my
environment and I just don't have a clue on how to proceed forward.

Basically, as of about a week ago, Mac users in my environment who are
using Entourage (I believe it is the latest version.) began to
experience an inability to sync their INBOX as well as Deleted Items
and Sent items and Calendar. Through a bit of testing and fiddling
about, we were basically able to come up with a temporary solution but
it too has issues.

Our temporary solution to the issue was to open the users mailbox
within Outlook from a PC (again, I'm a Windows guy so don't kill me).
After opening the users mailbox, we were able to archive down the
contents of the INBOX and completely empty it. The second we did, mail
started to flow to the INBOX. Of course, the down side to the
temporary solution is that if you put the previously existing mail
back into the users mailbox, the sycing stops again. Again, in the
spirit of testing, we emptied the entire mailbox and things were fine
until the previous mails and items were restored. On our test users we
requested a few of them to not return the old mail. Things went fine
for a few days on those users but eventually one of them re-
encountered the issue,

Basically, we suspect through our research and troubleshooting, that
there has been a mail received with a non-Roman font and that that
mail is what Entourage is having the issues with. We can't 100%
confirm this because we are unable to narrow it down to one specific
mail. This also makes me suspicious that possibly there is something
else amiss in our actual Exchange 2003 Environment.

Nothing new has been added to the Exchange environment as far as
updates. Additionally, none of the users have changed Entourage or
Office versions or done any recent updates. I always ask myself "What
has changed?" but in this situation, I am not aware of anything that
has. As I said previously, everything was fine up till the end of last
week then all of the sudden, "BLAM"! Mass Chaos.


Running Exchange Server 2003 SP1
Entourage 2004 (I think, though not 100% positive)
MAC OS'es are 10.4 and Leopard

If anyone has ideas or needs more specific information, just let me
know.

Thanks In advance.
 
D

Diane Ross

Basically, as of about a week ago, Mac users in my environment who are
using Entourage (I believe it is the latest version.)

Exchange is not my area of expertise, but I can help you with the version
info and that will help the Exchange experts when they have that info.

Under Entourage in the menu bar select About Entourage. You will find the
version and build for Entourage. The latest version for Entourage 2004 is
11.3.6. Most applications keep their version info in the Menu bar under
their name next to the blue apple. Some keep the info under Help.

For a script that will give you all of the version info for Office products
see this page:

Microsoft does not update each application every time an update is released.
See ³Confused over Microsoft Update Version numbers?³ for a script that will
give you all of the version info for Office products

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/confused_over_microsoft_update.html>

For additional basics:

New2Mac & Entourage 101 <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/101.html>
 
O

otifrank

Exchange is not my area of expertise, but I can help you with the version
info and that will help the Exchange experts when they have that info.

Under Entourage in the menu bar select About Entourage. You will find the
version and build for Entourage. The latest version for Entourage 2004 is
11.3.6. Most applications keep their version info in the Menu bar under
their name next to the blue apple. Some keep the info under Help.

For a script that will give you all of the version info for Office products
see this page:

Microsoft does not update each application every time an update is released.
See ³Confused over Microsoft Update Version numbers?³ for a script that will
give you all of the version info for Office products

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/confused_over_microsoft_update...>

For additional basics:

New2Mac & Entourage 101 <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/new2mac/101.html>

** UPDATE**

We are seeing some relief from this miserable situation. Basically,
last night we decided to go ahead and update the Exchange Server to
W2K3 SP2 which, in retrospect, we should have had done by this point
anyway. (BAD ADMIN!! BAD BOY!! NO CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR YOU!!)
Anyway....The SP install seemed to take forever (read 3+ hours) but
eventually completed. After talking to most of the previously affected
users this morning, everyone is again able to fully sync Entourage!
HOORAY!

FWIW, most users are on MAC OS 10.4.11 with a few smatterings of
10.5.1. The Entourage version that most of the affected users had is
Entourage 2004 for MAC version 11.3.6.


Learn a lesson here folks. KEEP YOUR SERVICE PACKS UP TO DATE!!

Thank you for your help!
 
D

Diane Ross

Glad to hear things are better. At least, you learned a bit about Macs in
the process and have found a place to get help in the future.

Happy Holidays!
 
W

William Smith

** UPDATE**

We are seeing some relief from this miserable situation. Basically,
last night we decided to go ahead and update the Exchange Server to
W2K3 SP2 which, in retrospect, we should have had done by this point
anyway. (BAD ADMIN!! BAD BOY!! NO CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR YOU!!)
Anyway....The SP install seemed to take forever (read 3+ hours) but
eventually completed. After talking to most of the previously affected
users this morning, everyone is again able to fully sync Entourage!
HOORAY!

FWIW, most users are on MAC OS 10.4.11 with a few smatterings of
10.5.1. The Entourage version that most of the affected users had is
Entourage 2004 for MAC version 11.3.6.


Learn a lesson here folks. KEEP YOUR SERVICE PACKS UP TO DATE!!

Of course, finding the solution yourself is the most rewarding when the
problem has been so troubling. ;-)

I suspect this may be what you were experiencing
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/exchange_server_hotfix_resolve.html>.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 

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