I have had several issues similar to this over the past several months but now cannot open entourage 2008 at all. I did try going to an earlier version of my database but to no avail. Reintalled office yet again, still no luck. Did not try opening the database in anything other than the most recent version (12.1.4) but getting progressively more frustrated. Fortunately Ihad not upgraded on my home machine and was able to port the MUD over and open in 2004 which I had not taken off my work machine. Not the best fix since projects, sent emails etc are not the same. This is a huge issue and makes this software virtually unusable. Microsoft should be issuing some statement and a fix since it sounds like more and more of us, particularly withlarge files, are having this issue
If you call Microsoft and open a support ticket and you get a
knowledgeable rep (if) they will tell you this rebuild situation is a
known problem. The rep I had told me not only that it is a known
problem they're not sure why its not working. It doesn't matter
whether you try to run a rebuilt DB in 04 or 08. The only solution is
to go to an earlier backup that you haven't run rebuild on and open
that. First run verify to make sure that the earlier backup is running
correctly then if so open it. You will have lost a bit of data,
depending on how old your backup is but not everything. To ensure you
loose no e-mail I'd suggest using a good IMAP system, if you're not an
Exchange user, such as Gmail or Fastmail.net. I use them both and they
are both excellent. So if your local mail is lost or damaged, when you
launch into a new identity or whatever, all your mail is stored on the
IMAP mail system and will re-download to either the backup identity
you get running or a new identity.
The vexxing problem that I have with Entourage is sync services and my
data every so often gets corrupted or items get lost or duplicated or
whatever. Microsoft is aware of this problem also and are working on
it but again they have no time-frame on a fix and are trying to figure
out how to solve this one also. When I encountered the rebuild problem
I thought well this is just getting all too much. If I didn't have a
backup, which fortunately was less than an hour old, I would have lost
everything. That's what rebuild is for. But with it being unreliable,
this is really significant.
In addition, I read these and other forums all the time and see other
users experiencing all kinds of problems with Office 08 in which
they're having to do this and that to fix their problem. I haven't run
into these problems but it maybe that I'm just not doing what they're
doing. However, it just says that this software from the largest
software company is sorely lacking and really unreliable and time
consuming. Frankly, its a mess. If you scan this and other forums such
as Markspace, Macfixit etc you'll probably see what I'm talking about
and many users have just said I've had enough - I'll use the Apple
apps, revert to 04 if they just have a Palm (for sync) or try
something like Contactizer. For me, personally, I find this all a
shame as I used Outlook from 97 to 2003 and have used Entourage since
03 to the present. I'm used to the way it works and need its
relational capabilities. But just a couple of days ago, I was looking
up a contacts e-mail address and he wasn't there. So I went to iCal,
Time Machine and scanned back and on Monday he was there. Then I
noticed on Monday there were 347 contacts but my today DB was showing
314 contacts. I recalled on Monday Entourage did something really odd
but it ran afterward and really payed no attention until I noticed
this missing contact. So I went back to Monday at the same time in
Time Machine and restored the 08 main identity I work with in
Entourage. Sure enough, when I launched Entourage there were now 347
very important contacts but I had lost all my changes from that day of
the restore to the good backup. I had to manually cut and paste these
mainly calendar items from iCal to Entourage (of course disabling
sync). Once done, I had to re-sync Entourage to sync serv, then
overwrite my Palm and Blackberry. As you can see, not only is this
just a waste of time, if I hadn't noticed the missing contact,
somewhere down the line I would have noticed one of these 30 or so
contacts that had disappeared and a restore would have been unfeasible
as too many days of manually cutting and pasting from iCal is not
tenable. And, I can't have iCal overwrite Entourage as I categorize
everything in Entourage, link most items at least to a contact and
other items and many items reside in a project. All this would be lost
and if all this is lost, there's simply no point in using Entourage. I
might as well use the Apple apps. They just don't have the power I
need but I might have to do it anyway as if I really were to loose
such critical info as a contact or something written around that
contact (meeting notes or whatever) then I'd be in trouble. I'm kind
of walking a very fine line here.
