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Q&A: backing up Entourage

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I wasn't sure if anyone was actually reading today, but the first question has already arrived. It is:

I have a client who uses Entourage with an Exchange server. What is the best way to backup emails that reside on the exchange server and take into consideration that she's a mac user?

I think that the one of the best resources for Entourage users is the Entourage MVP site. If you're not familiar with it, MVP stands for Most Valued Professional. It's a Microsoft thing: these are non-Microsoft employees who are expert users of our applications, and they like helping out other people. They know the apps backwards and forwards, and they can make the apps sing and dance. In short, MVPs rock.

On the Entourage MVP website, they have a page all about backing up your Entourage data. That looks like a pretty thorough list of the back-up options in Entourage, so I think it will take care of you.

If you have more questions about backing up Entourage data (or, for that matter, anything else about Entourage), check out the Entourage public newsgroup. There are lots of Entourage experts there, including many (most? all?) of the Entourage MVPs. You'll get great responses to pretty much anything you ask.

Another useful thing for you is the Office:Mac 2004 resource kit. It provides all sorts of guidance for using all of the Office apps, including guidance for users in Exchange environments. It's possibly the single most useful Office document that you'll find. There's a lot of Entourage information in there.

There are, of course, lots of other Entourage resources out there. The best ones are linked on the Entourage MVP page.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2006
    Hi Nadyne, Thanks for all the great tips.  I think this might require a bit more sleuthing though, and I will try a few posts with the Entourage public newsgroup.  Thanks. The thing that makes it such a tough one is the fact that we're trying to backup Exchange data and we've found that thus far, any backup using the mechanisms that the MVP site recommends (and that I use for other non Exchange server clients - usually POP), fail precisely because the email, addresses and calendar events  aren't local, but merely a cache of what's actually on the Exchange server.  As a result, one of two problems arise:
  1. None of the backup procedures that actually can archive Exchange emails aren''t automated and requires manual initiation (which my client often forgets to perform)
  2. The only procedures that can be automated only back up the cache of the Exchange data, and if the Exchange server goes down, the cache will be of no use, since Entourage treats the Exchange data as authoritative and will ( just as quickly as you use your backup Identity ) overwrite your backup with what is on the Exchange server.  Demonstrated like this:
  3. Exchange has 10 emails -> Entourage has 10 emails -> Backup of Entourage cache has 10 emails
  4. Exchange server crashes -> Exchange server has 0 emails -> Entourage syncs with Exchange to also now have 0 emails -> Backup stored on an external device has 10 emails
  5. Move backup Entourage email cache to Identities folder to try and recover from crash -> Upon first launch of Entourage, you see the 10 emails that are in the cache, but then immediately Entourage syncs with the exchange server, which has 0 emails and wipes the backup clean as well. I guess that's why I posed the question, because I can't seem to find an automated way to create a backup that is actually usable in the case that we need to recover from it. Let me know if you have any thoughts as I'm really not that familiar with working with Exchange servers. Savour  your quieter work week.  Oh...and glad you liked my site. :) Mark

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2006
    If your client's Exchange server is crashing frequently, there's a much bigger issue that needs to be solved by whoever adminisiters her Exchange account.  If Exchange occasionally crashes and results in data loss, then her Exchange administrator should be restoring her data (and the data of the other users on that server) from the Exchange backup.  At this point, it sounds like that's the real issue, and that backing up her Entourage data is a measure that is a bandage for that real issue.   If she's deleting an email that she actually wants to keep, it seems like she should just be able to remove it from the trash folder.  I won't even begin to admit to how often I delete email that I intended to keep, and my trash folder is what keeps me from really getting in trouble. For my own use, and since my Exchange mailbox has a pretty small limit, I usually copy the messages that I really want to keep into the Entourage local folders.  Those get backed up regularly, using the MBOX option.  An AppleScript guru could probably automate this process.  This doesn't get it back to Exchange, but that's not part of my own use case.  I don't think that this solves the real issue that you're describing, but it does address how to back up the data.

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2006
    Oh, and this doesn't fully help you out either, but I'll post it here for others ... There's an AppleScript on the aforementioned Entourage MVP site that automatically backs up your Entourage user data that's 60 days or older to your local folders.  It's here: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/exchange/autoarchive.html