Exchange Server erased all my messages afterreverting to old database

[ctan]

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

I'm having a heck of a week, I need some guidance as this was a catastrophic event for me.

I have two accounts on my Entourage, one for me and one for tech stuff. Both of them are setup as an Exchange account. I did a database rebuild on Sunday and all of the emails I was getting were coming in as EML folders. I saw the note about rebuilding and so I went back and made the old database the regular database (by renaming in Finder after all MS apps were closed).

Next I launched Entourage and as it is syncing up almost all of my mail is gone. I have a few email messages from April of last year, but not all of them. So I went from about 70MB of email down to 5MB.

It is not in the deleted items. I went to OWA and it is not in that deleted items. It is just gone. It is driving me crazy.

When the EML folder issue was happening I pulled up OWA and opened a few emails that were bad in new tabs. I then came back after I replaced them and they were all gone.

Now to add more confusion. Not all of the emails were gone. I had a nested folder that retained most of it's messages, but every folder that was not a nested folder is now empty.

Does anybody have any ideas of how to get my messages back? I'm willing to try anything.

 

[ctan]

So I was able to get it back by having an email admin go in and recover deleted items in Outlook. Almost everything flowed back in.

But what really bugs me is that I couldn't do it from the Entourage client.

Why can't we have real functionality with Exchange in Entourage?

 

[Diane Ross]

Why can't we have real functionality with Exchange in Entourage?

This is why we don't advise doing a rebuild for Exchange accounts. Microsoft
does a poor job of documenting basic operations like rebuild.

In Entourage Help, search "Verify and rebuild the Entourage database".
You¹ll find this caution, but IMHO, it should advise to just create a new
Identity for Exchange users rather than trying to rebuild. I wish I knew
more and would love to debate this with the developers so we are giving the
best advice we can. However, they are too busy to respond lately. I think
they are heads down on the next version.

Caution
If you have a Microsoft Exchange account, rebuilding the database deletes
any information that is not synchronized with the Exchange Server, including
your contacts' digital ID certificates, categories, links between items, and
Project Center information. Before rebuilding the database, you might want
to create an Entourage archive. For more information, see Export or back up
information.

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
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