Using Entourage with an external HD

[Simon Kelly]

Hello all, Wonder if anyone has the answer to the following question.

You can run Outlook Express (for Mac OS 9) from an external Hard Disk and as
long as the identities folder is in the same folder as the application
outlook will happily keep all new emails stored on the External HD.

Anyone know how to do the same thing with Entourage for OSX?

In case you're wondering why... we have 2 eMacs running OS 9 for my wife -
one at home - one in the office. And it's a hell of a lot easier to carry a
small 20Gb pocket drive around instead of a laptop!

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Hello all, Wonder if anyone has the answer to the following question.

You can run Outlook Express (for Mac OS 9) from an external Hard Disk and as
long as the identities folder is in the same folder as the application
outlook will happily keep all new emails stored on the External HD.

Anyone know how to do the same thing with Entourage for OSX?

In case you're wondering why... we have 2 eMacs running OS 9 for my wife -
one at home - one in the office. And it's a hell of a lot easier to carry a
small 20Gb pocket drive around instead of a laptop!

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Keeping OE's Identities folder in the OE application folder was the ancient
OE 4.5, OS 8 way of doing it but it was still possible in OE 5.0x for
backward compatibility. (The very first 5.0.0 still did it that way, but it
changed in 5.0.2.)

You can't do that with any version of Entourage.

Try this: copy the Office 2004 Identities folder (which lives in
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/ folder) to your external drive. Delete it
from the original location. Then make an alias to the moved folder in the
original location (~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/ folder). Leave Entourage
application itself in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/ on the computer.
As long as the external HD is mounted. the alias is valid, and Entourage
will happily save messages on the Identity folders on the external drive.

Never unmount the disk while Entourage is running. When you do eject it, the
alias will lose its connection to the real folder, of course. When you next
mount the disk, the alias _may_ be able to find the original. Or you may
have to "fix" the alias. As soon as you do, everything will be OK again.
You'll want to test this out a few times to see if you need to fix the alias
(or make a new one, if you want) _before_ launching Entourage to make sure
it doesn't make a brand new Office 2004 Identities folder with an empty
database, or whether it will just re-establish the alias links by itself
automatically.

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

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