Identity crisis
December 11, 2009 10:53 AM Subscribe
My entourage 2004 "Identity" is occupying 1/4 of my (full) HD. I use webmail for email and just want to get this enormous file off my HD, but it won't copy to an external drive. Any advice?
Try running the Microsoft Database Utility to make a backup/more compact version, then delete the previous/bloated versions.
In MS Office 2008, this utility is located in Microsoft Office 2008 > Office > Microsoft Database Utility. I'm fairly certain the utility file existed in Office 2004 as well.
This MS KB article has more info.
posted by mosk at 11:31 AM on December 11, 2009
In MS Office 2008, this utility is located in Microsoft Office 2008 > Office > Microsoft Database Utility. I'm fairly certain the utility file existed in Office 2004 as well.
This MS KB article has more info.
posted by mosk at 11:31 AM on December 11, 2009
Response by poster: so the old database "Main Identity" is ~14GB. When I run the database utility this stays the same and it creates a new file called "Main Identity [Backed up 12-11-2009]" that is only ~400mb. Am I safe to delete the 14GB file?
posted by muscat at 11:55 AM on December 11, 2009
posted by muscat at 11:55 AM on December 11, 2009
I don't know, but to be safe, why don't you load the 400mb backup onto another computer, restore it, and see if everything's there before you get rid of the 14 GB main database? Otherwise, I would second .rar-ing it, transferring it piecemeal, then un-raring it wherever the destination is.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 12:14 PM on December 11, 2009
posted by Salvor Hardin at 12:14 PM on December 11, 2009
The external drive is probably formatted with FAT32, which, iirc, has a 4GB limit on file size.
posted by jjb at 12:23 PM on December 11, 2009
posted by jjb at 12:23 PM on December 11, 2009
Choose the 400MB backup as the main identity and make sure it works. If it does, yeah, you should be good to delete it.
BTW, I think some of that bulk may be due to attachments from old emails, so if those are something that are important to you, you may want to pay special attention to them when you evaluate the backup.
posted by mosk at 12:35 PM on December 11, 2009
BTW, I think some of that bulk may be due to attachments from old emails, so if those are something that are important to you, you may want to pay special attention to them when you evaluate the backup.
posted by mosk at 12:35 PM on December 11, 2009
I wouldn't trust the backup utility as your sole repository for your Entourage database. I manage a number of Entourage users, and it can be flaky at time.
What kind of error message do you get when trying to copy? I would definitely check for the system file as jjb mentions. Go to your Utilities folder inside your Applications folder and open Disk Utility. Click on your hard drive on the left hand pane and click on the partition tab to see what it is. If it's FAT32, your Apple will list it as MS-DOS (FAT).
posted by jmd82 at 12:39 PM on December 11, 2009
What kind of error message do you get when trying to copy? I would definitely check for the system file as jjb mentions. Go to your Utilities folder inside your Applications folder and open Disk Utility. Click on your hard drive on the left hand pane and click on the partition tab to see what it is. If it's FAT32, your Apple will list it as MS-DOS (FAT).
posted by jmd82 at 12:39 PM on December 11, 2009
Welcome to the shitty Entourage data format. Ten years ago, it (sort of) made sense to keep all emails in a database file. Email was small and not many people had LOTS of email. Attachments were also small. Of course, the huge increase in file sizes, HMTL and rich-content in emails has caused these Entourage database files to grow huge and to (quite often) become corrupted. This kind of database is even worse than others because when you delete a file, you're not actually deleting it from the database--it just *flags* it as being deleted but doesn't truly remove it from the database. This is why the database utility exists--to help you to rebuild the database to make it smaller.
But I suspect your problem here is that your very large database has become corrupted and that the rebuild your'e attempting is failing. To go from 14GB to 400MB is too great a reduction in size. To get that kind of size reduction from a rebuild, you'd have to be deleting virtually all your email from the database before rebuilding. And I doubt this is the case, but only you're familiar enough with your email to make that determination.
Here's what I'd do if I were in your situation--and have done this with some clients in similar siutations:
1) Set up a Gmail account.
2) Configure Entourage to connect to the new account via IMAP, so that in Entourage you're actually seeing two different email accounts--your original and the new Gmail one.
3) If you have a built a sorted folder structure in your Entourage, reconstruct that structure in your Gmail account.
4) Upload, the contents of each folder on your original account, one folder at a time (select all) to the corresponding folder on the IMAP Gmail account. This will take awhile and is tedious. You're essentially copying up all your emails to Google's server.
Either:
5) Configure Gmail to check the mail server for your old email box. Set up a filter/label so that any email going to jmd82@old-email-domain.com to it's own folder.
or
6) At your old email webmail, there's probably a setting somewhere to tell it to forward all your email to your new Gmail address.
7) Configure your new Gmail account (this is optional) to appear as if mail you're sending is coming from your old email address.
And now abandon the craptastic Entourage. If you really must use an email program, there are many that are better: Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or MailPlane. All can communicate with Gmail via IMAP and MailPlane is specifically written to interface with Gmail.
That even the newer Entourage 2008 database still stores all its email in one giant database is inexcusable in this day and age. Everyone else has moved to more efficient and less-prone-to-corruption database storage means like MySQL, SQLite consisting of individual .eml files.
By pushing your email to a different storage mechanism you're eliminating the possibility of future corruption. And if you even need to pull it off Google, it's very easy to via POP and a better email client. You get to retain your existing email address and use Gmail for your storage.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 2:09 PM on December 11, 2009 [1 favorite]
But I suspect your problem here is that your very large database has become corrupted and that the rebuild your'e attempting is failing. To go from 14GB to 400MB is too great a reduction in size. To get that kind of size reduction from a rebuild, you'd have to be deleting virtually all your email from the database before rebuilding. And I doubt this is the case, but only you're familiar enough with your email to make that determination.
Here's what I'd do if I were in your situation--and have done this with some clients in similar siutations:
1) Set up a Gmail account.
2) Configure Entourage to connect to the new account via IMAP, so that in Entourage you're actually seeing two different email accounts--your original and the new Gmail one.
3) If you have a built a sorted folder structure in your Entourage, reconstruct that structure in your Gmail account.
4) Upload, the contents of each folder on your original account, one folder at a time (select all) to the corresponding folder on the IMAP Gmail account. This will take awhile and is tedious. You're essentially copying up all your emails to Google's server.
Either:
5) Configure Gmail to check the mail server for your old email box. Set up a filter/label so that any email going to jmd82@old-email-domain.com to it's own folder.
or
6) At your old email webmail, there's probably a setting somewhere to tell it to forward all your email to your new Gmail address.
7) Configure your new Gmail account (this is optional) to appear as if mail you're sending is coming from your old email address.
And now abandon the craptastic Entourage. If you really must use an email program, there are many that are better: Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or MailPlane. All can communicate with Gmail via IMAP and MailPlane is specifically written to interface with Gmail.
That even the newer Entourage 2008 database still stores all its email in one giant database is inexcusable in this day and age. Everyone else has moved to more efficient and less-prone-to-corruption database storage means like MySQL, SQLite consisting of individual .eml files.
By pushing your email to a different storage mechanism you're eliminating the possibility of future corruption. And if you even need to pull it off Google, it's very easy to via POP and a better email client. You get to retain your existing email address and use Gmail for your storage.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 2:09 PM on December 11, 2009 [1 favorite]
Jjb is probably correct about the file size limit of the external drive.
Use 7-Zip to archive the file in 1GB pieces directly onto the external drive. Look for the "Split to volumes" option.
posted by Nameless at 1:23 AM on December 17, 2009
Use 7-Zip to archive the file in 1GB pieces directly onto the external drive. Look for the "Split to volumes" option.
posted by Nameless at 1:23 AM on December 17, 2009
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posted by Sys Rq at 10:56 AM on December 11, 2009