Entourage database corrupted

October 15, 2007 11:24 AM

Corrupted Entourage database: what can I do (Mac)?

OS X 10.4.5: Entourage 10 (part of Office X), 2001 (I think, at least that's the installation year). Trying to launch Entourage brings up the message "Entourage cannot access your data. To attempt to fix the problem, rebuild your database." There are two rebuilding options, Typical Rebuild and Advanced Rebuild. Choosing either of them brings up the message "An error occurred while launching. Mail error." After which the only option is OK and the program quits.

Anything I can do? I am aware of this thread (http://ask.metafilter.com/25790/Corrupted-Database - sorry, no link-formatting button), and I have mailed the originator of Entouraid, which appears no longer to be in development and not accepting payments to unlock it (although a trial version, allowing you to retrieve the first 20 emails is still available - it seems to work btw). I've run disk utility. But are there any other options?

posted by londongeezer to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Do you have the most recent version of Office X? If not, download and install the 10.1.9 updater. Microsoft improved the database rebuilding capabilities over time, so simply updating and trying another rebuild might do the trick.
posted by pmbuko at 11:55 AM on October 15, 2007

I'll try that now.
posted by londongeezer at 12:09 PM on October 15, 2007

Do you know anyone with Office 2004? You could ask to create your own user account on that computer, copy over your Documents > Microsoft User Data folder, and try to run the Database Utility tool.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:17 PM on October 15, 2007

Hmm, tried both those. 10.1.9 wouldn't run: it required the old password, and when I gave it, it wouldn't accept it. Office 2004 does, it claims, "rebuild the database" successfully, but in fact seems to extract zero old emails from it, i.e. it enables Entourage to open but all the folders are empty, like a fresh copy has been installed.

I've had no reply yet from the creators of Entouraid: if anyone knows how to acquire a fully-working (as opposed to test) copy, please let me know here or at askme27-at-yandex.ru. Thanks.
posted by londongeezer at 4:46 PM on October 15, 2007