When good software goes bad

Somewhere in these pages I have extolled the virtues of Entourage as an email client. I used to be a devotee of Eudora, but I switched over to allow Entourage to interface more fully with McGill’s exchange server. Plus, I liked how it integrated email, calendar and address book.

But today, somehow, my “database” got corrupted. I only recently learned that Entourage had a database, which is a whole other story. But it appears to be enough of an issue that Microsoft has a program to fix your database, which I used, since Entourage has pretty much every email I’ve sent and received since 1998. Although I’ve backed it up, it’s apparently a very clunky system. After having my database reconstructed, I opened Entourage and was immediately treated to it re-sending at least 25 emails, if not more, from weeks ago. It’s now been reconstructing my mailboxes for at least 75 minutes. Ugh. What a colossal waste of time and a socially awkward situation. Microsoft ought to be able to prevent that.