Entourage - corrupt database rebuilt

[rivan]

Fired up Entourage 2008 this morning, with in a few minutes (not immediately) I get a message that the database is corrupt and I need to shut down office apps and rebuild it.

I back up the database, use the tool to verify, then rebuild the database. I fire up entourage and find a couple folders of mail missing entirely. One of them I can live without, the other one's stressing me out.

I know - my own fault for not backing up properly. Typically I use folders for all emails on a given project, then archive at the end - the vast majority of my projects don't last more than a few weeks, and don't end up with hundreds of mails - typical is the range of a few dozen, tops.

Do I have any different options for repairing/etc this database or in any other way recovering the missing folder?

 

[hiromizu]

what did Microsoft say when you called them?

 

[manly]

This is a MS feature, not a bug.

Sorry, couldn't resist. 🙁 Any luck Googling yet?

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: manly
This is a MS feature, not a bug.

Sorry, couldn't resist. 🙁 Any luck Googling yet?

I've done a few things; tried importing into Mail and Thunderbird hoping it would fix/ignore any corruption - no dice. Thunderbird doesn't accept Entourage files, Mail appears to want to launch Entourage and presumably will applescript the mail over. My hands are a little tied - I'm on a corporate machine that's pretty restricted.

There's also an app called Emailchemy that purports conversion from one email format to another, I'm testing that now. The down side is I'm sure work won't spring for it, and it's $30 I'd rather not spend to retrieve work stuff. Meh.

 

[sjwaste]

This is sort of off the thread topic, but are there any discount Office 2008 channels for students? I'd love to get a copy and MS Mac products aren't part of my Technet subscription.

 

[Kmax82]

What I've found is that when a file gets corrupted, it's usually not salvageable. The fact that you were able to get some of your mail from that is amazing to me. If you don't have a previous backup of the Entourage database, I think you're screwed (to put it bluntly). I'll look around and see if I see anything though.

As for the Emailchemy. I don't think that would work since the issue is the file itself, not the format of it.

I dunno.

 

[rivan]

Well I've had significant success with the demo version of Emailchemy. Converting it to Thunderbird mail and using Tbird to read them, it looks good, though the sender and subject is masked for all email in the demo output.

Let's see if the company will spring for it.

Originally posted by: Kmax82
What I've found is that when a file gets corrupted, it's usually not salvageable. ...
As for the Emailchemy. I don't think that would work since the issue is the file itself, not the format of it.

I've actually had quite the opposite experience - typically when a file corrupts, you don't lose ALL of the data. Though most of my experience with corrupt files is with image data, I've found that conversions will sometimes ignore the corrupt part, or allow it through anyway and it'll just display badly. In images, this will manifest itself sometimes as a partially scrambled image, sometimes a fully scrambled one. I was hoping for the same thing with my mail, since the vast majority of it was recovered anyway, I was hoping I'd be able to recover the rest.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: rivan
Well I've had significant success with the demo version of Emailchemy. Converting it to Thunderbird mail and using Tbird to read them, it looks good, though the sender and subject is masked for all email in the demo output.

Let's see if the company will spring for it.

Originally posted by: Kmax82
What I've found is that when a file gets corrupted, it's usually not salvageable. ...
As for the Emailchemy. I don't think that would work since the issue is the file itself, not the format of it.

I've actually had quite the opposite experience - typically when a file corrupts, you don't lose ALL of the data. Though most of my experience with corrupt files is with image data, I've found that conversions will sometimes ignore the corrupt part, or allow it through anyway and it'll just display badly. In images, this will manifest itself sometimes as a partially scrambled image, sometimes a fully scrambled one. I was hoping for the same thing with my mail, since the vast majority of it was recovered anyway, I was hoping I'd be able to recover the rest.

Well, hopefully they'll spring for it. If not, and the messages are important, then it'll probably be in your best interest to just spring for it yourself. But that's a call that you have to make.

Glad that I was wrong about losing all your data.. 🙂