Welcome to the Entourage Help Page About | Blog | Links | Glossary | Feedback | Downloads | Help

Crashes and Hangs

The following techniques have proved helpful when dealing with crashes or hangs attempting to receive or send mail.

Crashes

If Entourage is crashing or hanging while downloading messages, try this technique contributed by Steve Friesen:

  1. Shut off the Junk Mail Filter
  2. Disable all your rules
  3. Now see if you can download the message.

This problem is fixed in Entourage 2004.

If that does not help, here are the normal troubleshooting steps:

  1. In Tools>Accounts>Mail, double-click the mail account with which you are having trouble.
  2. In the Options tab, enable Allow Online Access ....
  3. Select the server in the Folder List
  4. In the Message list, click the Sent column to sort by date
  5. In the View menu, disable Preview Pane
  6. In the Message List, select the oldest message there and delete it (or mark it for deletion)
  7. Select a later message
  8. Re-enable Preview Pane.

Do you crash, or can you read it? If you can read it, try the oldest remaining message. For any message that causes a crash:

  1. Disable Preview Pane
  2. Select the bad message
  3. Delete it.

When none of the remaining messages causes a crash, try Send & Receive All schedule. Entourage should survive this time. Remember to go back and disable Online Access to restore Entourage's speed.

Error Messages

If Entourage displays error messages but does not crash, the first thing to do is read the error message! Seriously: if a problem has an obvious cause, the error message will tell you what it is. However, if the message simply says "An error occurred" and gives a number, this is an Apple operating system message and Entourage has no way of knowing what went wrong.

If the error message came from Mac OS X, it may be documented on the Apple website. However, if the error message came from BSD Unix (the actual operating system in OS X) it won't be documented on the Apple website either. Try the following procedure:

  1. Try receiving mail in a different email client (for example, Apple Mail, or Netscape.
  2. If the error message occurs in another email client, the problem is with your ISP.

If the problem occurs only in Entourage:

  1. Go to Tools>Accounts>Mail
  2. Select your Mail account
  3. Delete the account
  4. Re-create the account without using the assistant (enter all details manually)
  5. Do not click Advanced Receiving Options for the account unless your ISP has given you specific instructions about POP Authentication (which is very rare).

If you still get errors:

  1. Read (or print) the Entourage Help topic Rebuild the Entourage database
  2. Delete the mail account (again...)
  3. Quit Entourage
  4. Use Sherlock to find the Entourage Preferences file (its location depends whether you are using Entourage X or 2001)
  5. Re-name the Entourage Preferences file and the Entourage Settings file you will find in the same folder.
  6. Follow the Help procedure for an Advanced rebuild
  7. Remake the account, again without using the assistant.

If there's still a problem:

  1. Go to the Entourage menu.
  2. Choose Switch Identities.
  3. Say OK when prompted.
  4. In the Entourage dialog that appears, click New....
  5. Create a new Entourage identity.
  6. Re-create your mail account.

There are some problems we cannot solve. If you still have problems after all this, I am afraid you just found a new one.