Entourage hangs when switching to/from calendar, notes, inbox, etc

[darrenr]

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

Hey all,
I have a fully updated/patched version of Entourage 2008 on my fully patched leopard MBP, and when in Entourage, switching to the calendar, notes, inbox, etc will hang entourage for 15-120 seconds. During this time, Entourage uses ~100% CPU and is completely unresponsive.

I connect to an exchange 2007 server using https over a VPN, and have only a few hundred emails in my mailbox. I have created a new identity, excluded MUD from time machine, and blown away every prefs file that can possibly relate to MS or entourage, all to no avail. I have no flagged emails, no projects, no tasks, and only a handful of calendar events.

Any ideas? I'm about ready to have IT blow away my entire exchange account and recreate it if I can't find another fix.

thanks

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hey all, I have a fully updated/patched version of Entourage 2008 on my
fully patched leopard MBP, and when in Entourage, switching to the
calendar, notes, inbox, etc will hang entourage for 15-120 seconds.
During this time, Entourage uses ~100% CPU and is completely
unresponsive.

Are you using projects with tons of contacts and or e-mails ??

Corentin

 

[Darren]

quote:
"I have no flagged emails, no projects, no tasks, and only a handful of calendar events."

So no, no projects at all.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

quote: "I have no flagged emails, no projects, no tasks, and only a
handful of calendar events."

So no, no projects at all.

Sorry I missed it. It's a common cause for these issues.
Other than that, there is no obvious reason. A good database rebuild
(holding the option key down as you launch Entourage) usually does some
good though.

Corentin

 

[Diane Ross]

switching to the calendar, notes, inbox, etc will hang entourage for 15-120
seconds.

Sometimes linking can cause slowdowns. For example in the Address Book: Once
it opens, click on the name column to re-sort your contacts. That should
cause Entourage to re-sort the list and speed things up.

Slow switching to the Calendar.

Possible culprit: flagged messages (flagged messages are now considered a
type of "to-do", by the way.) One user reports, At one point I had about
2000, and would get stuck for 5-6 minutes. I unflagged most of them, but I
still have a couple hundred, They now slow me down to about 30 seconds
switching to calendar and then flagging messages.

Since this is involving so many windows, rather than trying to rebuild an
Exchange account, I would just create a new Identity and let Entourage sync
back up.

 

[darren]

I have no flagged messaged, and have recreated the identity twice to no avail.

 

[Diane Ross]

I have no flagged messaged, and have recreated the identity twice to no avail.

What size if you database? You might need to move some messages out of the
Inbox.

 

[Darren]

I have 342 emails in my inbox, no other emails

 

[Diane Ross]

I have 342 emails in my inbox, no other emails

Here is the advice Bill, one of our Exchange specialists gives....

The Inbox is special. It gets synchronized more frequently than other
folders. You should keep it as small as possible.

I suggest you create your folders outside of the Inbox and move your
messages there. For more information have a look at my blog post:

"Optimize Entourage to better work with Exchange"
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2008/03/optimize_entourage_to_better_work_wi
th_exchange.html>
or <http://tinyurl.com/56ea7k>.

Hope this helps!

 

[darren]

happens with nothing in the inbox too. Seriously though, if you can't have 2 days of mail in your inbox without 2 minute delays then this is the greatest failure in the history of email clients. It's gotta be something related to my installation - currently in the process of rebuilding the laptop.

 

[Diane Ross]

happens with nothing in the inbox too. Seriously though, if you can't have 2
days of mail in your inbox without 2 minute delays then this is the greatest
failure in the history of email clients. It's gotta be something related to my
installation - currently in the process of rebuilding the laptop.

It definitely is a problem on your end. Let us know what you find.

I would look at your hardware too.

Problems from Insufficient RAM and Free Hard Disk Space

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/performance2.html>

For normal operation, you need a MINIMUM of 10% and should have more. That
need is for the temp files created and other housekeeping duties the system
requires. Less than that it will run but you are in grave danger of
overwriting, slowing down or crashing.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

I connect to an exchange 2007 server using https over a VPN, and have
only a few hundred emails in my mailbox. I have created a new
identity, excluded MUD from time machine, and blown away every prefs
file that can possibly relate to MS or entourage, all to no avail. I
have no flagged emails, no projects, no tasks, and only a handful of
calendar events.

I'm going to guess the problem is your combination of using VPN and
HTTPS (I'm assuming you mean your OWA server).

If that's how you're connecting then you're literally coming in from the
Internet, leaving the Internet, coming back in from the Internet and
then connecting to your back-end server. That's a lot of hops with
potentially a proxy server and one or more firewalls in between.

First, have a look at these instructions, which are valid for both
Entourage 2004 and 2008:

"Connecting Entourage to an Exchange Server at work"
<http://entourage.mvps.org/exchange/exchangeatwork.html>

You want to make sure you're using a back-end server address and not an
OWA address if you're connecting via VPN.

Next, have a look at this blog post of mine for ways to improve performance:

"Optimize Entourage to better work with Exchange"
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2008/03/optimize_entourage_to_better_work_with_exchange.html>
or <http://tinyurl.com/56ea7k>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[David Julian]

I think I found a solution:

Like yourself, I am a Leopard user running Entourage 2008. I visited this forum because I have been having the same slow switching behavior and frustratingly slow startup time when I launch Entourage 2008. I also have very slow email sending, attachments or not. Like you, I had tried everything a good Mac user knows to do, including re-installs and manual re-importing date until failure, ala Apple System 9 extension days.

After reading some of the blogs suggested above, I decided to cull down my address book, which in fact did contain a few bad addresses and unfinished contacts. Like magic, my switching is almost in real time now, so i wanted to pass along this concept: Dump all emails and contacts that might contain old defunt address servers, have strange code (like foreign incoming emails), or in any way cause Entourage 2008 to be ''checking" for something odd, missing or incorrect— which slows down it;s already sluggish behavior on the Mac. See if that helps. It helped me just now.

 

[darren]

ok, so I wanted to post a final follow up here as to what resolved my problem. It took a full wipe and re-install of leopard and Office for Mac! Right now, I have the same emails, same calendar, same address book, same connection type, same everything as before, but no hang/freeze/pause.

Sooo, if anyone else finds themselves in the same boat, the old re-and-re seems to do the trick.

 

[Diane Ross]

Dump all emails and contacts that might contain old defunt address servers,

Thanks for the follow up!!

FYI... For those that are using this to cull addresses, you can sort by
column "view last correspondence"

Menu bar --> Tools --> Columns --> ˆ "view last correspondence"