01-24-2003, 07:02 AM

Can anyone help please, I have a user who in her infinate wisdom has accidentally deleted her main identity in entourage (a pop3 account). Seemingly this has also deleted the files associated main identity, including specifically and most importantly a file called database which appears to be the central store for all email and contact information.

If anyone could provide any pointers on whether the file has been actually deleted, or merely marked as deleted and hidden or let me know of any possible ways to recover it, it would be a great help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated because coming from a pc backgroung I am not particularly familiar with macs, but also this is definatley an opportunity to earn a few brownie points and a few beers.

many thanks

Lee

01-24-2003, 08:11 AM

I'm not very familiar with the OSX version of Entourage, however in OS9 the database is located under Documents : MS Userdata : Office 2001 Identities : [user] : Database. If that file exists (It won't have been hidden) then its likely you still have your emails. Go to File > Import and see if you can trick it into importing the file - If you have outlook, put the entourage database into where the outlook one is kept. If it (or something like it in a different location) doesn't exist, then I think you're stuffed

01-24-2003, 09:48 AM

In OS X/Entourage X, the default mail store is:
"/Users/$USER/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities"
Most likely, it is the main identity, so the full path is:
"/Users/$USER/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/Main Identity"
If it isn't the main identity, it will be under that directory tree.

If Entourage physically removes the mail store database from the disk with an identity-deletion, your only recourse will be a data recovery tool. I suggest Data Rescue X: http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products...f57b1409cda653f

If you are not already backing up your Entourage database regularly, I highly recommend that you do. The database has been known to go south and get corrupted easily, so even apart from 'divine' user intervention, you could find your Entourage data inaccessible. I have a script in the Darwin forum that backs up the Entourage mail store to a CD-R disc every Friday near the end of the day:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/index.php...=ST&f=18&t=2010
I also use "ditto" to daily backup my working copy of the database (and delete these on Monday after coming back in to work), so I will never lose more than a day's e-mail and other work if/when the database does get corrupted.