WHY WON'T ANYONE RESPOND TO MY POSTS ABOUT THIS MAJOR ENTOURAGEPROBLEM???

[Subnorry]

PLEASE, please, someone tell me if this problem only affects me, and how to
fix it (this is my 4th post about this issue -- with NO RESPONSES!):

OFFICE 2008 ENTOURAGE/OFFICE REMINDERS DO NOT UPDATE EVERY DAY UNLESS I LOG
OUT & LOG IN AGAIN!!!!

I organize my whole life using Entourage Events and Reminders. However,
since I installed Office 2008 (which, IMHO, offers NO real improvement other
than speed over Office 2004, and IT has a 1,000 BUGS), every day I must Log
Out and then Log In again in order to get that day's Office Reminders to
refresh. I could have 20 events with reminders for a certain day, but those
reminders will never pop up unless I log out and in again. For instance,
every morning I awaken my iMac from Sleep, and after 30 minutes of normal
operation there are NO ENTOURAGE EVENT REMINDERS. Then, if I log out and
log in again, suddenly there are 20 reminders for that day's events! What
use is Entourage's Calendar Event Reminders if you have to log out and in
again every day to get it to work? How could this have NOT BEEN FIXED in
the SP1 update (12.1.0) or the 12.1.1 update?

This is a MAJOR FREAKIN' BUG, and yet I see no posts to this news server
about it. Why is that? And why has nobody responded to my last 3 posts
about it?

I have used the Database Utility to Rebuild the Office 2008 Database, with
no effect. So I tried Verifying Database Integrity and Compacting the
Database, and then for the hell of it I Rebuilt the Database again -- all to
no avail. I have also done the normal maintenance procedures on my Mac's
operating system, such as fixing permissions, running DiskWarrior 4.1 to
rebuild and replace the Directory (and using TechTool Pro 4.6.1 to do the
same thing), running maintenance scripts, cleaning all caches, etc. -- again
to no avail.

I'd like to figure out if this is affecting everyone or just a few of us.
If it¹s just a few of us, does anyone have any idea why and what conditions
make a computer susceptible?

Thanks for responding (either to the list or directly to my email address).

My System: Apple Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz 20-INCH iMac running OS 10.5.3
with 2 GB of RAM, Office 2008 (12.1.1).

 

[Diane Ross]

OFFICE 2008 ENTOURAGE/OFFICE REMINDERS DO NOT UPDATE EVERY DAY UNLESS I LOG
OUT & LOG IN AGAIN!!!!

Are you quitting reminders after they popup? Seems I remember another user
posting a similar question and they were actually quitting reminders instead
of clicking on the buttons in the window.

 

[Carol Leung]

Please check the NSWindow Frame values of the office reminder plist file
(under <user> | library | preference). if there is negative value, change it
to positive and relaunch office reminder. Also make sure the office reminder
app is not assigned to a space.

If this doesn't work, please contact me and I will work with you offline.

Carol Leung

a-carolATmicrosoftDOTcom
Microsoft Entourage Test
Disclaimer: This mail is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

 

[Subnorry]

Diane:

Nope, I'm responding to Reminders the same way I have for 6 years now --
that is, I dismiss reminders I'm done with and snooze those I want to be
reminded about again later. The problem is that Entourage (or more
accurately, Office Reminders) does not seem to recognize that the date has
changed, so it doesn't show any reminders for the new day -- until I logout
and login again, when it finally realizes that it's a new day and there are
reminders setup to remind on that day at that time.

For example, I might have 3 or 4 reminders on the screen at 11:59PM (or even
NO reminders), and there are 20 more reminders just waiting to pop when
midnight hits. But, when midnight hits NOTHING HAPPENS, and no reminders
will pop EVER AGAIN until I logout and login again because Office Reminders
simply doesn't understand that the time and date have changed and it's time
for several scheduled reminders to popup. This will usually happen after
more than one day of computer usage without logging off or restarting.
During that first day after a logout or restart, reminders will popup on
schedule as they are supposed to until the next day (usually after I've
Slept and awakened my iMac several times) when they just stop popping on
schedule because Office Reminders seems not to understand that time has
progressed and new reminders (or snoozed ones) are due to pop.

Does that make it any clearer, or have I just made the waters murkier?

The first time I posted this I got one response from someone who had the
same problem, but no one else responded with any advice on how to fix it.
Are we the only two people having this problem?

Thanks,
Jay Boshara

 

[Subnorry]

Carol:

Thanks so much for trying to help me with this Office Reminders problem. I
have tried as you suggested, but I do not have an Office Reminders plist
file! I also checked the root Preferences folder, but there were no
Microsoft prefs at all there. I also did a Spotlight search on ¡°reminder¡±,
but did not find any plist files.

This problem has been occurring ever since I installed Office 2008 5 months
ago or so, but I only just this week assigned Office Reminders to a specific
Space (though fat lot of good that did ¡ª Office Reminders still pops into
whichever Space I¡¯m in whenever a reminder is due). So, that cannot be the
problem (but just to make sure, I will un-assign it from that specific Space
(especially since the assignment doesn¡¯t work anyway).

So what should I do now? Please contact me at (e-mail address removed).

Thanks again,

Jay Boshara
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Subnorry]

Carol:

I finally found the Office Reminder plist file (it was called
"com.microsoft.entourage.office_reminders.plist"; I didn't find it before
because I was looking in the "Microsoft" folder of the Preferences folder
and I was looking for "xxx.office.reminders.plist"). When I opened it in
the Property List Editor (which I have never used before) I went through the
drop-down Class list for "NSWindow Frame savedFrame" and found the "Number",
which was 0 (zero). Should I change that to 1 or some other value that is
positive and then save the change?

Thanks,
Jay
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Diane Ross]

For example, I might have 3 or 4 reminders on the screen at 11:59PM (or even
NO reminders), and there are 20 more reminders just waiting to pop when
midnight hits. But, when midnight hits NOTHING HAPPENS, and no reminders
will pop EVER AGAIN until I logout and login again because Office Reminders
simply doesn't understand that the time and date have changed and it's time
for several scheduled reminders to popup. This will usually happen after
more than one day of computer usage without logging off or restarting.
During that first day after a logout or restart, reminders will popup on
schedule as they are supposed to until the next day (usually after I've
Slept and awakened my iMac several times) when they just stop popping on
schedule because Office Reminders seems not to understand that time has
progressed and new reminders (or snoozed ones) are due to pop.

Does that make it any clearer, or have I just made the waters murkier?

Yes that does help.

The first time I posted this I got one response from someone who had the
same problem, but no one else responded with any advice on how to fix it.
Are we the only two people having this problem?

It has not been reported on the newsgroup so it must be somewhat rare. Let's
see what Carol says to your .plist problem before we try some other
suggestions.

The only thing I see as different, is you have a lot of reminders and leave
them up longer. Once reminders popup for me, I dismiss or mark as done right
away. You must be one busy person.

 

[Subnorry]

Thanks, Diane.

By the way, it just happened again. Last night I had put my iMac to sleep
and it had 11 reminders open which I had neither dismissed nor snoozed.
This morning when I awakened my computer my 11 reminders were still there,
but all the new reminders that should have popped up because they were
scheduled to remind me today did not popup. I worked on my iMac for maybe
15 minutes before I realized that my new reminders had not popped, so I
logged out and then logged in again and when Office Reminders loaded there
were now 17 of them (the 11 from last night plus 6 new ones for today). As
usual, new reminders did not popup until I had logged out and in again. It
doesn't always happen that way though. On some nights I will have dismissed
or snoozed ALL of my reminders before putting the iMac to sleep, but the
next day after awakening my iMac no new reminders popup until I logout and
in again.

I will wait for Carol to respond to my last post so we can try to work this
out online.

Thanks for your help,
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Carol Leung]

It is okay to have value 0, only negative value which I have concern about.
So looks like your issue is not related to the app window position and size.
I will work with you offline on this.

Carol

 

[Diane Ross]

Was this ever a problem in Entourage 2004?

Do you enter then as Tasks or To do's? Bill Smith did a good job of
explaining the differences between Tasks and To do's:

First, all To Do items are Tasks but not all Tasks are To Do items (just
like squares and rectangles). Tasks and To Do items all have start
dates, end dates, can be completed, etc.

However, you create Tasks from scratch whereas To Do items are created
from other items in Entourage. If you receive a message that requires
action or you know you need to call someone in your Address Book then
you "flag" it as a To Do.

"To Do" replaces the previous "flag item for follow up" even though it
still uses the flag concept but goes one step further to allow you to
set a start date, end date, etc.

Only Tasks can be recurring items. To Do items can not.

 

[Subnorry]

Diane:

No, this was never a problem for me in v. 2004. And these reminders are all
Events (or Appointments, or whatever they're called). I have never used
Tasks or To Dos (though for some of the more mundane things, like reminding
myself to take out the trash on Thursday evenings, I probably should use a
Task or To Do instead of an Event, but I never got around to learning how to
do those because Events had always worked fine for me). I create all my
events by simply double-clicking on a blank space within the date window
that I want in Month View, which creates a new Event. I almost always set a
reminder for my Events.

As far as I remember, this problem started when I first installed Office
2008 on my iMac, which had just recently been updated with OS 10.5 using
Erase & Install, so there shouldn't be any problem with third party apps
interfering. After installing v. 2008 I imported all my Entourage 2004
info, then I was off and running. 2008 was buggy as hell for several weeks
until SP1 was released, and since that update the only remaining bug is this
major one.

Thanks again to both you and Carol for helping me figure this out,
(e-mail address removed)