How to Fix a Corrupted Rules File in Entourage 2008

Published by jacob355 on July 21, 2014

MS Entourage is the most popular and widely used email client manger developed by Microsoft for Mac users. It allows you to store your contacts, email, task, calendars entries, notes, journals etc. in a separate and unique form. Entourage 2008 is the updated version of MS Office that has many new amazing features. With the advanced option to recover, store, manage, and quick access your data.  It let you create rules that allow you to move emails from a specific person to folder or allow you to take some necessary action.

It uses a single database RGE file and the separate the identity to the keep the user’s data. But in some situation the rules file get corrupted, damaged, and give you a error message “The Rules file appears corrupt. Rules cannot be used”. When the rule file gets corrupted your database become inaccessible.

It is a very heartbreaking situation for any user when they find their database inaccessible. If you get error message then it is clear that your rule file is corrupted need to be repaired as soon as possible.

To fix the corrupted Rules File follow the below instruction:

1. Close MS Entourage program and all other programs that are running on your Mac.
2. Now open your hard drive. Move to the “Documents” folder. Choose the MUD “Microsoft User Data” folder.
3. Now hit on “Office 2008 Identities” folder, and then choose “Mail Identity” folder.
4. Drag “Rules” folder to trash folder and empty your trash folder.
5. Restart your Entourage. Move to “Message” in main tool bar. Move down and hit the “Apply Rule,” and scroll over and choose “All Rules.” You can rebuild the rules with tabs which are shown in dialog box.

The corruption behind the database is not only due to rule file corruption. Few symptoms of database corruption are given below:

a) When you try to move or delete items from any folders then your Entourage 2008 stops responding. b)  While running the entourage application you face issues. c) Items of entourage database cannot be properly opened or viewed. d) Crashes or freezes while opening the entourage. e) Getting blank emails. f) Getting message that are unable to delete.

g) Erroneous contact entries are shown.

When you find the above situation while using database then your stored data might become inaccessible.

In order to get rid of this issue you can try the below Solution:

A) Rebuild Entourage 2008 Database:

To rebuild your Entourage 2008 Database  you can use inbuilt database utility of MS Entourage and solve the corruption issues. Follow the steps to fix the issue in your entourage.

i) Close all the Office applications.

ii) Now open Database Utility (You can start Entourage by holding OPTION key on keyboard)

iii) Choose the database which you want to rebuild (Database Utility window allow the option to choose the database)

iv) Choose the rebuild Database option and hit the continue option to begin the rebuilding process.

v) As soon as the rebuilding process gets over you will get a message “Your database was successfully rebuilt.” on the screen

vi) Hit on Done.

Vii) Now hit Quit.

B) Repair Entourage 2008 Database:

If you find that the above solution is not helpful then the last option left with you is to use third party repair tool. You can use Entourage Repair Tool will allow you to get back the corrupted data. This tool works in all entourage corruption situation and repair and restores the database in a new healthy form. It carry out the depth scanning of Entourage database and extract all the objects such as contacts, emails, notes, calendar entries, tasks, attachments, and many more.