Some people like to keep all their mail around forever. Some of us prefer to sweep away mail and other information relating to long-completed projects. Entourage 2004 is flexible enough for either approach. With its new expanded limit for the size of the Entourage database (see the Sidebar, More Room for Your Information), data packrats will be happy. And the new Archiving feature helps those of us who like to store old information outside of Entourage.
Archiving creates a new kind of file, called, not surprisingly, an Entourage archive. These files can contain most types of Entourage data (the exceptions are Address Book Groups and Scrapbook clips). You can select items for addition to an archive file by either category or project, and once selected, the data can be either copied or moved out of the Entourage database.
Of course, if you choose to copy data, you can use the archiving facility to back up projects (though you should also always back up the entire Entourage database as part of your usual backups—you do back up your machine, don’t you?). In fact, the Backup button at the bottom of the Project Center’s Overview tab runs the Export process, as detailed in “Archive Your Data,” next.
Note
An Entourage archive file (file extension: .rge) is really just a Mac OS X package file that contains folders for each type of data you export, plus some files with metadata about the package and its structure. Within each folder, you’ll find the data files for that type. To look inside an Entourage archive file, select it in the Finder, Control-click, and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. I suggest that you do not modify the package contents, however, as you could prevent the archive from being imported correctly in the future. You could copy folders and files out of the package, but you shouldn’t move them.
To archive or back up Entourage data, follow these steps:
Choose File > Export to open the Export Wizard (Figure 15).
Export Items to an Entourage Archive is selected by default. Do one of the following:
To export by project: Click Items That Are In The Project, then choose a project from the pop-up menu that appears.
To export by category: Click Items That Are In The Category, then choose a category from the pop-up menu that appears.
To export everything: Click All Items. Everything in the item types that you check farther down in the screen will be archived.
Warning
All Items means just that; all items in your Entourage database will be archived. Use this option with caution! It can take Entourage a long time to archive all your items, and if you choose to move the items (instead of copy them), you will end up with an empty Entourage file, which is disconcerting if you weren’t expecting it.
Click the checkboxes to select which kinds of data you want to go into the archive.
Click the right arrow button to continue.
In the next screen, decide if you want to delete items that have been archived. Click the No button, which will make a copy of the items in the archive, or the Yes button, which will move the items to the archive and delete them from Entourage.
Click the right arrow button to continue. A standard Save dialog appears, named after the project or category you selected.
Navigate to where you want to save the archive, then click Save.
You can bring the contents of an Entourage archive back into Entourage. Follow these steps:
Choose File > Import.
Click Import Information From an Entourage Archive.
Click the right arrow button to continue. An Open dialog appears.
Navigate to and select the Entourage archive file.
Click Import.
Entourage imports the archived information and distributes it as needed (contacts go to the Address Book, project information to the Project Center, and so on). Because of the possibility of confusion with existing mail folders, email imports into the Folder List in a new folder having the same name as the archive file. Within this folder there are other mail folders, arranged in the same hierarchy as they were in the original. You can move the imported folders back into your normal folder arrangement, or move mail from the imported folders into any other folders.