HELP! Entourage all of a sudden started trying to RE-DOWNLOADold e-mail from 4 months ago to presen

[Michelle]

I was busy working on my computer this evening, when all of a sudden,
Entourage went into superdrive and began redownloading all old posts since
early September! Most of these are still on Yahoo's servers, but have
ALREADY been downloaded to my computer once, what would cause Entourage to
download them again--all of a sudden?

At first I thought it was just re-downloading items from a particular
listserv that I'm on. Then I looked closer and saw that almost all of my
folders were showing large amounts of "unread" "new" e-mail. I quit
entourage before it could go any further and then I relaunched (not
connected to the internet) so that I could disable my send/receive
schedules. If I hadn't caught it in time, it would have re-downloaded over
2,000 items!

Any idea of what to do to stop this? I wasn't even in Entourage (it was
open in the background) when it began so I know that I didn't inadvertently
change a setting somehow!

 

[Pitch]

This happens every time one rebuilds the database, or at least it does
for me. I haven't figured any workaround for this, and I wish I
understood how/what that occurs. I just let it do its thing (often to
the tune of 2000 emails as you noted), and then delete them all. I
generally zero out my Inbox each day, so this isn't hard. Just delete
the contents of the Inbox.

Not much help, but that's how I do it.

 

[Ethan Isenberg]

You know, I had that same problem, myself. Last spring, the exact same
thing started happening on Entourage. I too had a POP account with
Yahoo (with a year's worth of mail), and I found my computer flooded
with new emails. Erasing old emails is easier said than done, and
unfortunately, you lose the status tracking that occurs with Entourage
(read status, reply/forwarded status, etc.), as well as any organizing
you've done (I had carefully sorted my mail into different folders)
when you de-dup the originals.

Not prepared to reorganize everything, I was forced to give up on
Entourage and start using web mail, which is pretty crappy, even
(especially?) with Yahoo's new "Beta" interface. The question is
whether this is a problem with Entourage or Yahoo. Unfortunately,
Yahoo's customer service is such that it's very difficult to find out
anything on their end.

I finally switched to an IMAP server (fastmail), a few months ago, and
I've been having all my Yahoo mail forwarded there. But I'm curious as
to whether other users have experienced this, esp whether there's a
correlation with Yahoo.

 

[Antonio Moreno]

Hi , i think this problem has nothing to do especifically with yahoo, i had
the same problem in the past with another pop server (terra). maybe it has
something to do with the pop mail itself into entourage, because with imap
accounts it'd never happened to me.

 

[Michelle]

I certainly didn't rebuild my Entourage database, so I don't believe
that it's due to that. If I close Entourage, then reopen and re-enable
my send/receive schedules, will the 2nd round of e-mails continue
downloading or will the problem have cleared itself up?

What do you think?

Last time it did this, I moved ALL of my Yahoo mail into another Yahoo
folder. Since Entourage will only download from what's in the Inbox, I
let it attempt to download--knowing that the Yahoo inbox is empty. I
then, just leave the "old" mail in the yahoo folder and know that
anytime I search for items prior to that date, to look for them in the
folder instead of the inbox.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

Unfortunately, because POP Mail was never designed to be used like an IMAP
account, there are times when the store list gets confused, either in
Entourage or on the server. Every once in a while this tends to happen to
all accounts that use 'retain on server' and there doesn't seem to be much
you can do about it. It does happen when you rebuild your database because
all message associations are lost. It can also happen when they rebuild the
message store at the server - something you have no control over.

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to stop the flow now. Entourage
has started downloading all the mail because it has lost track of what
messages have already beeen downloaded. There is no way to restore that
information, other than to dwonload it all again.

I have a script on my web page that will help to identify and delete any
duplicates - it's called 'Remove Duplicates' and is available from
<http://www.barryw.net/scripts/>

 

[Michelle]

Thanks for the offering of your scripts, but I didn't end up needing
them. I did what I said that I'd done before:
Last time it did this, I moved ALL of my Yahoo mail into another
Yahoo
folder. Since Entourage will only download from what's in the
Inbox, I
let it attempt to download--knowing that the Yahoo inbox is empty.
I
then, just leave the "old" mail in the yahoo folder and know that
anytime I search for items prior to that date, to look for them in
the
folder instead of the inbox.
I just made sure that everyone prior to the doubling confusion was put
into a Yahoo Mail folder that I label "Old Mail". I make sure that the
only thing that is left in Entourage is truly NEW mail. I then return
to Entourage, re-inable all of my send/receive schedules, and click the
send/receive button to automatically activate the first mail check.
Everything worked perfectly and it only downloaded the 40 or so e-mails
that were truly new.

Thanks for the input though.

One more question. I'm not sure that I've ever manually "rebuilt" my
database--unless the system does it automatically when I download
updates. Is anything lost when a rebuild takes place?

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

Organization: http://groups.google.com
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage
Date: 20 Jan 2007 00:19:00 -0800
Subject: Re: HELP! Entourage all of a sudden started trying to RE-DOWNLOAD old
e-mail from 4 months ago to present


One more question. I'm not sure that I've ever manually "rebuilt" my
database--unless the system does it automatically when I download
updates. Is anything lost when a rebuild takes place?

Some updates can include a change to the database structure which can, in
turn, trigger a rebuild automatically. However, I think the last update to
do that was 11.1 - I can't think of a later one, without looking it up.
Certainly not the last couple of minor dot releases.

As to what is lost, links between items can be lost as can local caches of
IMAP, exchange, news & hotmail accounts - these are re-downloaded next time
you visit the individual accounts/folders though. Categories on exchange
items are lost. Links to folders in rules and the MLM are lost (as each
folder gets a new unique ID during the rebuild process).

I think that's all. Normally, no 'hard data' items are lost, such as mail,
events, notes etc.

 

[Diane Ross]

One more question. I'm not sure that I've ever manually "rebuilt" my
database--unless the system does it automatically when I download
updates. Is anything lost when a rebuild takes place?

YOU can't accidentally rebuild. To rebuild, you hold down the Option key
when starting Entourage then select which type of rebuild you want to do.
Other than an occasional rebuild with an update, you will have to select the
rebuild function.

Some of your data might be lost if you choose the Advanced Rebuild option.
You should use this option only if you have already performed a typical
rebuild and continue to experience problems starting Entourage or storing
data.

For full instructions on rebuilding see:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html>

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>