Entourage 2004 will no longer sync with iCal despite all efforts

[mschmalenbach]

Hi

Entourage 2004 will no longer sync with iCal despite all efforts.

I have Leopard 10.5.4 running on a MacBook. I have Entourage 2004, reporting itself as version 11.4.0, and MS's autoupdate feature states there are no outstanding updates...

I have Entourage set up in the preferences panel to sync with iCal, Address Book and .Mac (now known as MobileMe). I have it set to use the address books and calendars that are in my Exchange account. I am receiving emails happily via the Exchange account. The address book syncs absolutely fine. The iCal doesn't. I have deleted the Entourage calendar in iCal after I had switched off the sync features so as not to delete my Entourage calendar...

Nothing - even when I created in iCal a new 'Entourage' calendar.

I'm not sure when this broke - it used to work perfectly, and I've been away from it for a couple of months for various reasons, so... It may even have been when I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger...

Does anybody have any ideas?

I have Office 2008 on order - might this fix things?

Cheers

Martin

 

[mschmalenbach]

Update

I have switched off syncing in Entourage, deleted the Entourage calendar in iCal.

No joy.

Next I deleted the .plist preferences file for iCal, plus the contents of "Calendars" in ~/Library

No joy

Next I got rid of the above plus the entourage .plist files in ~/Library/Preferences (Having shut down ALL Office programmes)

No joy

I then repeated the above plus deleted the office and entourage additional plist files in the "Microsoft" folder in the above Preferences folder

No joy

So, next step would seem to be to uninstall Office 2004, clear everything out, and then reinstall, grab all updates and THEN run entourage - I'll let you know - apparently a reinstall of Office can take a while...

Aaah - Mr Gates, thank you so much for such attention-demanding software - now if only I could get my employer to switch away from Windows to Mac OS X I could spend my mornings working instead of waiting for Xp Pro to start up without crashing 4 or 5 times first (seriously... brand new expensive business laptop, and I lose approx 1.5 hrs per day at the mo waiting for the machine to stop mucking about.... Grrrr..!!!)

Cheers

Martin

 

[mschmalenbach]

Urgent Request

Could somebody who DOES have Entourage syncing well with iCal, send me a copy of the following files:

In ~/Library/Calendars

You will find several folders, one called "Calendar Sync Changes" - ignore this - and several others with names such as "3359E218-2006-46F2-9DFF-7330FF0F1400.calendar" - i.e. they all end with ".calendar"

There is one for each calendar held in iCal

Go through each of these ".calendar" folders and double click on the "info.plist" file in each. The Mac OS X preferences file editor will start and you will be able to view the file.

The very last 2 lines of each plist file should contain variable & value pairs, specifically

Title | Home
Type | Local (or something)

The Title "Home" value will change from file to file - it holds the name of the calendar.

So go through each .plist file until you find one that contains "Title | Entourage" - and let me know what its corresponding "Type" value is - I suspect it may not be 'Local'

In fact, why not send me the whole file? I'm at

martin [at] p-nrg.com

Many thanks

Cheers

Martin

 

[nadyne]

Entourage 2004 will no longer sync with iCal despite all efforts.
I have Leopard 10.5.4 running on a MacBook. I have Entourage 2004, reporting itself as version 11.4.0, and MS's autoupdate feature states there are no outstanding updates...

Is it that iCal doesn't show any of your calendar events, or just that new/updated events aren't showing up in iCal? Do you still have the Entourage calendar in iCal?

11.4.0 isn't the latest version -- we released 11.5 last month. I'm not sure why AutoUpdate isn't showing the correct version, but you can download it manually from our download page.

The Entourage MVPs have some FAQs about Sync Services and iCal, run through their steps to see if one of those works for you.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[Ntombi]

That's weird. My Autoupdate didn't show the update either. Even when I just ran it manually, it showed that everything was up to date, even though my Entourage shows 11.4.0. I'm running 10.4.11, FYI. Should I still update to 11.5?


ETA: Never mind, I read the details, and the answer is yes. I'm DLing it now.

 

[danny_w]

That's weird. My Autoupdate didn't show the update either. Even when I just ran it manually, it showed that everything was up to date, even though my Entourage shows 11.4.0. I'm running 10.4.11, FYI. Should I still update to 11.5?


ETA: Never mind, I read the details, and the answer is yes. I'm DLing it now.

Same here. I am running Entourage 2004 (currently at 11.4.0) on Leopard 10.5.2 and AutoUpdate says everything is current. My calendar updates normally; I just created a new event in Entourage, checked Entourage prefs to make sure it was set to sync, then checked iCal and the new event was already there.

UPDATE: I just downloaded and installed the 11.5.0 update and Entourage still shows that it is version 11.4.0 in About. What gives? Did this update not include any changes for Entourage so it didn't update its version string?

 

[mschmalenbach]

Tried everything - still no joy!!

Hi Nadayne

Thanks for your response. I tried everything on the FAQs, and other boards, including the 11.5.0 update.

Firstly, NOTHING has changed.

I still can't sync to iCal, and the Entourage calendar in iCal is still missing.

Secondly, Entourage is still reporting as being v 11.4.0

Ideas?

Cheers

Martin

 

[danny_w]

Hi Nadayne

Thanks for your response. I tried everything on the FAQs, and other boards, including the 11.5.0 update.

Firstly, NOTHING has changed.

I still can't sync to iCal, and the Entourage calendar in iCal is still missing.

Secondly, Entourage is still reporting as being v 11.4.0

Ideas?

Cheers

Martin

Same here as far as reporting 11.4.0

 

[RMRM]

Entourage 2004 will not sync with iCal under Snow Leopard

I have had the same problems with Entourage 2004, after upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard. I have also tried all combinations of resets and nothing has worked.

Microsoft has a recording on their support line stating that if you have trouble syncing Entourage after upgrade to Snow Leopard, some user settings may be corrupt and they suggest creating a new user and set up syncing in the new user.

I tested this with a POP account under a "test" user and it worked perfectly. However, when I tried this with my actual "Exchange" account, I have had the same old results; nothing syncs.

Apple suggested that Entourage 2004 has problems with Snow Leopard and suggested upgrade to Entourage 2008. However, you must be careful, since the Home & Student edition, which is what I have, does not support "Exchange" accounts. Therefore, if upgrading to Entourage 2008, it appears you must use the "Business" edition in order to access your "Exchange" account.

I am not able to spend on another Office suite for now. So, I'm looking into scripts that sync Entourage with iCal and Address Book manually. I have seen some search results on this and will try a few and see which will work better. It will take me some time, since I don't have the hours this requires... This had been going on for more than 2 months now...

I even tried resorting to the Mac Mail (and iCal and Address Book) application, connecting to my Exchange account, and skip Entourage altogether. However, Mail (et al) only supports Exchange 2007, not my older 2003 version... Which is why I'm looking into the standalone scripts...

Let me know if the upgrade to 2008 solves the problem, since you mentioned it's on order.

Good luck!