Entourage ate my mail

[germanbeer]

Yesterday i was working on my mac and saw an email downloading on my entourage, it didn't make it to the mailbox as my entourage closed unexpectedly (with no warning) i clicked on my entourage and the button on the dock went in a puff of smoke (as if it was being removed).
When i went into the apps and reopened entourage from there it opened as if it were brand new (complete with a welcome email from microsoft).

So i have a couple of questions...
Where did it go? (i checked my mail boxes online and there was no mail in either of them)
Could it be a virus? (i know about macs not having virus, but it has coincided with the downloading of an email) i don't have any virus protection working on my mac at all...
I backed up onto my time machine last week, but i don't know how to make use of the entourage database file. the basic instruction as if i was switching identities didn't do anything.
i have run a disk verification and it says that all is running smoothly.
do i need to rebuild the database? is there any simple step by step instructions to do it? (I'm a girl )

Any help anyone could give me would be most appreciated!

 

[blodwyn]

Yesterday i was working on my mac and saw an email downloading on my entourage, it didn't make it to the mailbox as my entourage closed unexpectedly (with no warning) i clicked on my entourage and the button on the dock went in a puff of smoke (as if it was being removed).
When i went into the apps and reopened entourage from there it opened as if it were brand new (complete with a welcome email from microsoft).

So i have a couple of questions...
Where did it go? (i checked my mail boxes online and there was no mail in either of them)
Could it be a virus? (i know about macs not having virus, but it has coincided with the downloading of an email) i don't have any virus protection working on my mac at all...
I backed up onto my time machine last week, but i don't know how to make use of the entourage database file. the basic instruction as if i was switching identities didn't do anything.
i have run a disk verification and it says that all is running smoothly.
do i need to rebuild the database? is there any simple step by step instructions to do it? (I'm a girl )

Any help anyone could give me would be most appreciated!

The Entourage database is in one file, called "Database", located in
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/Main Identity

So find that file in Time Machine, restore it to the above location, and you should be OK

 

[germanbeer]

I brought back the database backup from the time machine, put it into the main identities folder, said that i wanted to replace the existing one, and then opened my entourage...

nothing happened..

Any other ideas? Or haven't i restored it properly?

Thanks for your help though

 

[blodwyn]

I brought back the database backup from the time machine, put it into the main identities folder, said that i wanted to replace the existing one, and then opened my entourage...

nothing happened..

Any other ideas? Or haven't i restored it properly?

Thanks for your help though

Maybe you restored a version that was corrupted? Can you go further back in time and restore an older one? Otherwise you could try running the Database Utility to try and repair the database - it's in Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office

 

[germanbeer]

Thanks for your help, i transferred the database, but that didn't seem to do anything, so i went and transferred the whole microsoft user data file from the time machine, and voila! it worked.

I really appreciate your help.... Am now just importing my inbox over to Mail and will hopefully not have the same problem again

Cheers