Microsoft Outlook and Entourage on your Mac
Microsoft Outlook and Entourage can be extremely useful but uneasy bedfellows with your Apple Mac computer.
The professional Microsoft apps provide a host of features and improvements beyond the offering from Apple’s own mac mail. However some care has to be taken if either of these are going to be your primary email application.
Database too big?
Most problems occur when the database file and folder’s within the program grow too big. If you rely heavily on email as a primary communication format (and frankly who doesn’t these days), then you can quickly exceed the 2gb recommended maximum.
If you haven’t already implemented an active archiving procedure for Microsoft Outlook and Entourage on your mac you need to keep a check on this growth. Failure to do this means a cataclysmic event is almost inevitable.
“Can you afford to loose all your business communications history?”
. . . that is the question you must ask yourself.
Reducing the size of the folder’s in your database is the best way to limit your vulnerability to sudden and complete email loss.
Backing up your identity
Even backing up to an external drive can have complications and you need to be aware that databases backed up in this way might not be an adequate and reliable safety net.
When the database is active, backing it up using the inbuilt backup features such as Time Machine can actually introduce corruption. You need to omit the necessary files from your backup and look to copying these files manually for a full safe backup option.
Restoration
Unfortunately a lot of customer’s who come to me have not been so lucky and their database utility hasn’t been able to recover their Main Identity.
All is not lost and their are some tricks that can help your recover lost emails. The procedure is not for the faint hearted however and a thorough understanding of your machine is required if you are to attempt recovery yourself. This helpful guide will take you through step-by-step though and is a good starting point on the road to recovery.
Dorset Mac Man is always here to assist if you want help to recover Microsoft Outlook and Entourage on your mac. We have successfully recovered hundreds of corrupt database identities and you can count on us to have you back on track again.
Steps to security
I can introduce you to some techniques for keeping abreast of potential issues and an automated backup system can be put in place for extra reassurance.
There are also ways to manually backup your database rather than leaving it to automated systems, which may ultimately be undermining your data backup security.
Manually backing up may take a some time and require a little learning but in doing so you can be secure in the knowledge that your business data will always be available to you.