Entourage 'virus' has wiped an entire account

[AlBDamned]

I don't know a lot about Entourage, but since it's the Mac version of Outlook, I have a question. Did she have a large amount of email, say > 2 GB worth?

I ask this because Outlook stores mail in a custom .pst file, which is limited (in Outlook 2000) to 2 GB. Many Outlook users I know have lost all their email because they went over the 2GB limit.

This may be the issue here, but like I said, I don't really know.

Edit: sorry, should have read the whole thread, but still I'd like to know, is this ever a problem on Entourage?

I don't think there was as much as 2GBs on there. That exact 2GB thing happened to a colleague's inbox before and it was worrying at the time but it got sorted. 2GB, unless you're sending/receiving big media files the whole time, is a massive amount of email and in that case, there were emails going back to 2002! Not got a clue if it still happens in Entourage, however.

iMeowbot: Thanks for that, very handy for future reference.

 

[CanadaRAM]

The emails have been deleted from her hard drive, not her 'account' in that sense.
None of the three; preference lists deletion, rebuild database or a repair of permissions has helped in any way, unfortunately.

OK: How do you know they have been deleted? I'm not being obstructive here -- not showing in Entourage does not equal Deleted.

Entourage emails are kept in a single, large database file, unless there are multiple accounts on the machine, the Entourage files are usually in a folder Microsoft User Data: Office 2001 Identities: Main Identity. The files are named Database, Database Cache, Messages, and several others.

(Edit: Heh... Beaten to the punch by iMeowbot. Good point that the folder name will vary by the version of Office, and it could be within Documents or out at the root level, depending on the age of the installation)

If Entourage does not have the Main Identity folder in the correct place, it will not display the emails or accounts, and will offer to create a new account - thus setting up a new Main Identity.

You need to do a Find on the machine for these files. More than likely, there are multiple iterations of them. Look for the largest ones with a recent modified date. (not THE most recent, because that's likely the new, empty identity). Maybe some are in the trash DON'T EMPTY THE TRASH until you verify what's going on.

There is missing information in your account of happenings. There is some causal action that you don't know about.

I am guessing that somewhere between Email received and trouble call to son, Mom has reinstalled Entrourage, deleted some files, or otherwise succeeded in creating a new, empty Identity. This is not fatal as long as the original Identity has not been trashed and emptied.

To reiterate: There is NO WAY that an email, whether unzipped or not, can cause the Entourage to lose or delete an Identity.

Actually, there is one way, but it's a vanishing small possibility: If Mom had 1.9999 Gb of mail in her Database, and the email was the last straw to put the Database over 2 GB in size, Entourage would then fail. But in my experience, it would simple refuse to open, not open a blank ID. (Edit: AIBdamned also types faster than me. Double Heh...)

 

[AlBDamned]

CanadaRAM, I think you may have misread this thread but damn - I wish you had read it the first time round!!!