Entourage 2004 confuses Main Identity folders on primary andsecondary drives

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Help, please. Entourage 2004 is saving its Identity data to the wrong drive
and reading the wrong drive.

A couple times since upgrading from Office X to Office 2004, but never
before, Entourage has confused the Main Identity folders on my primary drive
and my backup drive.

I noticed this a couple days ago but today took notes on anything affecting
the OS that might affect Office 2004. Today, I did three things to fix a
fan acceleration problem caused by OS 10.3.4 and preceding the Entourage
identity confusion:
-- Used Cocktail software to force system re-prebinding
-- Deleted the ~user/Apple.com finder preference
-- Zapped PRAM

A number of Entourage Tasks that I had changed earlier in the day showed as
unchanged each time. New Tasks did not appear. Tasks I had deleted did
appear.

Although I was running Entourage from the primary drive at 11 p.m., ,
Entourage's Database on my primary drive was listed as 1:46 p.m today. On
my secondary drive, the listing was 10:49 p.m today. I had NOT backed up my
primary drive to my secondary drive and I had NOT launched Entourage on the
secondary drive. Nor had I done any system maintenance tasks whatsoever on
my secondary drive.

I had experienced no other problems than the too-fast fan.

I ran DiskWarrior 3.0.2 and on re-booting into my primary drive, the Tasks
were as they should be. The Microsoft newsgroups to which I subscribe,
however, did not show the newsgroup messages I had downloaded and read.

On two occasions last week, I noticed that the newsgroup messages I had
downloaded and read earlier in the day, loaded as new when I clicked on each
newsgroup, as if I had never downloaded them, let alone read them, in the
first place.

I do NOT use a synchronization script. I do manually run Retrospect 6's
Duplicate procedure periodically, but it was NOT run between this afternoon
and tonight when Entourage worked with data from the wrong drive. Nor did
I run it between the similar drive confusion that existed a day earlier
after zapping PRAM.

I submitted a Help/"Send Feedback on Entourage" report on today's incident.
As a preventive, I did an option key launch of Entourage after DiskWarrior
got Entourage to use the primary drive's Database. The integrity check
found everything was OK. As a preventive step, I compacted/backed up the
Entourage.

Question 1: Should I do a rebuild?
Question 2: What else would you counsel?

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[Dave Cortright]

Entourage looks in the current user's Documents folder for a folder called
"Microsoft User Data", or an alias by that name. Make sure the identity you
want to use is inside that folder.

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

I'm sorry, I guess that I failed to make it abundantly clear in the subject
line and discussion that followed that Entourage 2004 refused to open the
proper identity on my primary hard drive and instead kept opening the older
identity on the secondary hard drive.

I attempted to thoroughly background MVPs on the issue and then clearly
state my two questions. I sought, and still seek, guidance on preventing
reoccurrence of the same issue. Please?

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Is it possible that you're booted from a system located on that secondary
hard drive, OR you've moved your OS X user folder there, OR you've moved
your user Documents folder there (think about that one for a while) with an
alias in the usual location, OR you've put an alias to the MUD or any of its
subfolders in the usual places while having the real folders on your
secondary drive?

I'm having trouble understanding what exactly you mean by "an identity on
my secondary hard drive". Norman. What does that mean? Is the Main Identity
folder on your secondary drive inside an Office 2004 Identities folder
inside a MUD folder there? Is the whole MUD folder backed up there? Is your
whole Documents folder backed up there? Are there any aliases anywhere?
Please make the structure clear.

Especially: where is your [OS X] System, where is your [OS X] user folder,
where is the Documents folder that's supposed to be inside that user folder,
and where is the MUD folder that's supposed to be inside that?

Simple version of above: if you're in Panther (or Jaguar), set a Finder
window to column view. Select the 'normannager' icon (or whatever you've
called your user folder) in the lower part of left panel, and keep following
the track in the columns through ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004
Identities/Main Identity/Database. Can you do it without any of the folder
icons being aliases with little arrows? That's your current Database in any
case.

Starting from your HD startup icon in the top part of the left column, and
going to HD/Users/normannager/Documents, is that the same one as before,
again no aliases?

You've either got an alias in there somewhere, or you're not booted from the
disk you think you are.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Thanks very much for all the thought and time you invested in this, Paul.
I've inserted my answers after each of your questions:

Is it possible that you're booted from a system located on that secondary
hard drive,

No. It would show in which drive's OS volume icon appears on top. I
checked by booting into the "B" drive OS to make sure that is the case.

OR you've moved your OS X user folder there, OR you've moved
your user Documents folder there (think about that one for a while) with an
alias in the usual location,

When my previous primary drive started to die, I did have to duplicate the
backup drive to the primary drive. But after installing Panther updates and
after upgrading from Office X to Office 2004, I could see that the new
versions did not make a difference on the secondary drive until I did a
Retrospect duplicate operation to bring my Drive B up to date.

OR you've put an alias to the MUD or any of its
subfolders in the usual places while having the real folders on your
secondary drive?

Just went into the Finder again and checked the dates on the MUD and its
subfolders in the primary and secondary drives. The primary is current.
The secondary drive's dates are from the last time I used Retrospect's
duplicate feature.

I'm having trouble understanding what exactly you mean by "an identity on
my secondary hard drive". Norman. What does that mean? Is the Main Identity
folder on your secondary drive inside an Office 2004 Identities folder
inside a MUD folder there? Is the whole MUD folder backed up there? Is your
whole Documents folder backed up there? Are there any aliases anywhere?
Please make the structure clear.

I'm referring to the Main Identity. The secondary hard drive's volume
structure is a mirror image of the primary hard drive as of the moment I
execute the duplicate operation. The only differences lie in the drive
volume names (DriveA-10.3.4 and DriveB-10.3.4) and in the newer dates that
appear in the primary drive's folders and files as I use them. The MUD
folder on both drives is exactly the same immediately after I duplicate the
primary drive volume's contents to the secondary drive volume.

Especially: where is your [OS X] System,

OS X resides where OS 10.3.0 installed it when I did an erase and clean
install. I did not move any system components or any of the applications
Panther installed then or through the updates to 10.3.4.

where is your [OS X] user folder, DriveA-10.3.4/Users/~normannager
where is the Documents folder that's supposed to be inside that user folder, /~normannager/Documents
and where is the MUD folder that's supposed to be inside that? /Documents/Microsoft User Data

Simple version of above: if you're in Panther (or Jaguar), set a Finder
window to column view. Select the 'normannager' icon (or whatever you've
called your user folder) in the lower part of left panel, and keep following
the track in the columns through ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004
Identities/Main Identity/Database. Can you do it without any of the folder
icons being aliases with little arrows? Yes

Starting from your HD startup icon in the top part of the left column, and
going to HD/Users/normannager/Documents, is that the same one as before,
again no aliases? Yes.

You've either got an alias in there somewhere, or you're not booted from the
disk you think you are.

You've raised excellent questions that have succeeded in closing off a
number of blind alleys, Paul. What intrigues me is the SPORADIC nature of
the problem, its limitation to a few occurrences in the four weeks since I
installed Office 2004.

Respectfully, Norm