Data import from Entouarge 2001 to Entourage v.X

Sep 09, '02 09:20:23AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

If you organize your life in Entourage 2001 - Rules, Contacts, Calendar entries, and, of course, mail - then you'd like to carry them with you when you make the switch from Office 2001 to X.

No problem, I'll just save my Microsoft User Data, (a folder with the databases for your information, located in the Documents folder on your System drive in OS9) and all will be fine.

Not really...

Problem
Entourage for X only gives you two options to import - from a text file, or from a program (well, there's Import Holidays, but it's not really useful in this case). Neither one will even give you a dialog to point at your old database, if you've just done a clean install. If you choose Import from Program, and select Entourage 2001, it will say there's no program from which to import. Of course there isn't, you've just formatted and installed OSX with your brand-spanking new version of Office for X. Why would you have Office 2001 installed?

I've come across this a couple of times, and just recently upgraded my work computer from OS 9 to Jaguar (10.2), and was again faced with my old solution - install Entourage 2001 in classic, replace with my database, start up Entourage X and import from there. Ugh.

Essentially, MS is saying that it won't import the database itself - unless you've exported the info as a tab delimited file or similar, it wants you to have the database attached to a working install of Entourage 2001. Simply replacing the X database gives you a nasty "Can't work with this database" and the program won't even launch.

The Solution
The one I used in the past worked, granted, but here's how to avoid having two installations of two different versions of Entourage. Simply make sure your Office 2001 CD is in the drive when you launch Entourage X for the first time, (or, if you have already launched it, when you import). You won't get the "no program to import from" message, and you can then point Entourage X to any place on the computer, including network drives.

Depending on how much of a packrat you are, this could take seconds, minutes, or even hours, but at the end of it all, you'll have all your old data, in all your folders, with all your settings.

If you're really in a pinch, and can't find your original CD, you can download Outlook Express, install it, and replace the Microsoft User Data with your archived one. I've actually done this just after I moved, and had no desire to unpack 20 boxes just to get my email working.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020909062023705