How to Repair and Rebuild Entourage 2008 database?

Entourage 2008 for Mac is an updated version of MS Office with advanced features to manage and recover quick access to your data. However, users may sometimes encounter one of the following messages:

• Office Database is Damaged
• Entourage cannot access your data. To try to fix the problem, rebuild the database
• The action could not be completed. An unknown error occurred

Cause of the error message:

Entourage Identity lets its users create more than one account to access email contacts, calendar entries, tasks, journals, etc., but all identities (alternately database) are separate and unique, and each identity uses a different set of account settings, appointments emails and more. The problem occurs when multiple identities create messages, tasks, notes, appointments, etc., and the information store increases beyond the prescribed size, then the Entourage identities are subject to damages and there is a need to rebuild entourage 2008 database.

Consider the following case:

In this case, the user tries to archive the old emails, and despite being successfully archived, there is an issue with Entourage database:

Entourage performance is drastically reduced when there is less free space. User tries to make the system more efficient by archiving the old emails and thus freeing some space:

1. Import Inbox to .RGE archive
2. Attach compressed archive to local storage
3. Shut down the storage
4. Build a duplicate copy of the main identity

When the user tries to load Main identity without verifying its contents, then everything appeared perfect in Entourage, but when the user tries to access the last seen folder, it contained corruption. The corruption affected the archive as well as the Inbox, which is connected to Exchange server. Subsequently, the user is also unable to access the main identity folder, and the only way to solve this problem is to rebuild the Entourage database.

Resolve the issue

 The Repair and Rebuild Entourage 2008 database resolves the issue in two ways –

1. Using the Inbuilt Database Utility of MS Entourage
2. Using reliable automated software

Use the inbuilt database utility of MS Entourage to rebuild the database and resolve the corruption issue of Entourage corruption. Follow the below-mentioned steps to repair entourage 2008 database:

1. Quit all apps.

Press the ‘Command option’ and ‘Escape key’ together; select an app and click on ‘Force Quit’. Once you have quit the application, close the Force Quit Application window

2. Test the free space as available on the disk

The free space should be three times the space on the current size of the identity folder. Examine the free space by opening the Identity folder available in the Finder option. Go to file and click on Get Info followed by Get Information. For a successful rebuild, the size of free space should be 3 GB if the current size of identity is 1 GB.

3. Create backup

Rebuild the database with the help of backup. To create the backup:

1. Go Home and double click on Documents folder followed by Microsoft user data folder
2. Next, double click on Office 2008 Identifies
3. Right click on Identity folder and click on Duplicate
4. Close all the open Windows

4. Rebuild the database and Create a new Identity

1. Press Alt key and restart Entourage while holding the Alt key till the Database Utility option opens
2. Select the main identity available in Database Utility. Click Rebuild database followed by Continue
3. The status bar displays the status of the Rebuild Once the process is complete, and the database is rebuild than a message displays on the screen stating that ‘Your Database was successfully rebuilt.’
4. Click on Close button followed by Quit, and this should repair Entourage 2008 database

If the database rebuild is not successful, then create a New Identity. Database rebuild situation arises when the Exchange server has multiple identities, and there is a requirement to establish a new identity to resolve the problem. The following steps help in creating the new identity:

1. Quit All apps and search for a given folder ‘HD/Users/USER_NAME/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/IDENTITY_NAME’ and copy it to the desktop
2. Start Entourage an click on Entourage menu to click on Switch Identity
3. Click New and type in the new name of the identity
4. Quit Entourage and search for the folder ‘HD/Users/USER_NAME/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/NEW_IDENTITY_NAME’ and rename it with ‘New’ ’
5. Copy the database contained in the old database to the new folder

Conclusion

Hopefully, the manual method of using the inbuilt database utility of MS Entourage resolves the issue.

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About The Author

Eric Simson

Eric Simson is an Email Platform Consultant and is associated with Stellar Data Recovery from last 6 years. He writes about the latest technology tips and provides custom solutions related to MS Outlook, MS Exchange Server, Office 365, and many other Email Clients & Servers.