A
Alex Johnson
I cannot be the only person who experiences this problem but I cannot find
anything through Google or the Microsoft KB.
When I edit a contact in Entourage and then click on the down arrow to go to
another, after editing that second contact, there is a good chance that some
of the data from contact one will replace data in contact two at the moment
I hit "save". This means I cannot cmnd-Z it back to how it was, because it
has been saved. So, data gets lost.
Example: contact one is John Brown, and I have edited his phone number, and
deleted one of the many duplicates of emails that I seem to get now. I have
home and work addresses for him. I save, hit the down arrow. I skip over
Jane Doe, the next on the list, as nothing needs to be edited. I reach Tom
Smith, whose phone number also needs to be edited. I edit, and click save.
As I hit save, there is a high probability that one "page" of Tom Smith's
details (i.e. one tab of information, such as all the home address details
or all the work address details) will be replaced by details from John
Brown, the last contact to be edited. It does not have to be from a field
that I have been working on, and usually I have not copied the data that is
being "pasted." I used to notice this frequently with Notes fields prior to
Sync Services being active - it was always the notes that got replaced. But
recently - and worryingly - it can be any set of fields - even his name. I
do not know whether Sync Services is to blame per se, or whether the fact
that I need to make edits more now causes this to happen more frequently.
The unintended consequence of Sync Services is that the Apple Address Book,
which was my backup, gets changed at the same time.
I think this has always happened with Entourage but I notice it much more
since getting a BlackBerry and even more since Sync Services was enabled,
which causes both automatic and irreversible updates, and a frequency of
duplication such that editing is more necessary. This does not happen 100%
of the time, but it is certainly more than 50%. As my contacts keep getting
messed up somewhere in the sync hell of .Mac, BlackBerry (which gets synced
at work to Outlook too), and Sync Services I am now trying to get to a
"clean" Entourage database that I will maintain elsewhere, and not sync. But
in the meantime I am editing one contact, saving, quitting, and reopening as
the only practical workaround (I could just do it in reverse and use Address
Book but the fields are just different enough to be annoying). This will be
immensely time consuming.
Has this been reported before, Mac BU? I love you guys but this causes
actual data loss with great frequency. What's really bad is that I can see
reviewing contacts that there are occasions in the past where fields have
been replaced and I haven't noticed. Yes I have a backup but switching
between databases and copying old contacts etc. one by one...?
anything through Google or the Microsoft KB.
When I edit a contact in Entourage and then click on the down arrow to go to
another, after editing that second contact, there is a good chance that some
of the data from contact one will replace data in contact two at the moment
I hit "save". This means I cannot cmnd-Z it back to how it was, because it
has been saved. So, data gets lost.
Example: contact one is John Brown, and I have edited his phone number, and
deleted one of the many duplicates of emails that I seem to get now. I have
home and work addresses for him. I save, hit the down arrow. I skip over
Jane Doe, the next on the list, as nothing needs to be edited. I reach Tom
Smith, whose phone number also needs to be edited. I edit, and click save.
As I hit save, there is a high probability that one "page" of Tom Smith's
details (i.e. one tab of information, such as all the home address details
or all the work address details) will be replaced by details from John
Brown, the last contact to be edited. It does not have to be from a field
that I have been working on, and usually I have not copied the data that is
being "pasted." I used to notice this frequently with Notes fields prior to
Sync Services being active - it was always the notes that got replaced. But
recently - and worryingly - it can be any set of fields - even his name. I
do not know whether Sync Services is to blame per se, or whether the fact
that I need to make edits more now causes this to happen more frequently.
The unintended consequence of Sync Services is that the Apple Address Book,
which was my backup, gets changed at the same time.
I think this has always happened with Entourage but I notice it much more
since getting a BlackBerry and even more since Sync Services was enabled,
which causes both automatic and irreversible updates, and a frequency of
duplication such that editing is more necessary. This does not happen 100%
of the time, but it is certainly more than 50%. As my contacts keep getting
messed up somewhere in the sync hell of .Mac, BlackBerry (which gets synced
at work to Outlook too), and Sync Services I am now trying to get to a
"clean" Entourage database that I will maintain elsewhere, and not sync. But
in the meantime I am editing one contact, saving, quitting, and reopening as
the only practical workaround (I could just do it in reverse and use Address
Book but the fields are just different enough to be annoying). This will be
immensely time consuming.
Has this been reported before, Mac BU? I love you guys but this causes
actual data loss with great frequency. What's really bad is that I can see
reviewing contacts that there are occasions in the past where fields have
been replaced and I haven't noticed. Yes I have a backup but switching
between databases and copying old contacts etc. one by one...?