Entourage Sync with iCal & Address Book - Fixed!

Question

Finally found a solution that really works.
Background
I had the infamous issue of trying to get Entourage Calendar and Contacts to Sync with iCal & Address book for the purpose of syncing with iTunes on my iPhone.
I've had most of the symptoms listed on this site.
It only syncs one way, Entourage Calendar shows up in iCal, but it's blank, Entourage Calendar does not show up at all in iCal, but contacts show up in Address book.
I've read nearly every post about it and tried all the various fixes listed, but none of them worked, or at least not consistently.
My setup:
OS X 10.5.5 MacBook Pro (latest updates)
Entourage 2004 (latest patches)
(If your using Mobile me, log out before you do this)
Here's what you'll need to do:
1. Backup your Main Identity which contains all your entourage info, email, contacts, calendars, etc. (Just in case you goof something up)
It's located in your home user account ~User/youraccount/documents/Microsoft User Data (Backup this whole folder)
If you don't know all your email credentials such as username, password, smtp, pop info, jott it down as it will save you some time later.
2. Launch Entourage and uncheck the Sync Services. Quit Entourage and all Office Apps.
Also you should archive all your entourage data if you want to copy it to the new setup.
Archive the contacts and Calendar Events separately.
3. Launch iCal and manually delete the Entourage Calendar (if present) Quit iCal.
4. Now open your documents folder and locate the folder named Microsoft User Data and rename the folder to Microsoft User Data Original
5. Create a new OS X User from the System Preferences... Accounts
6. Logoff your current user account and login to your new user account.
7. Launch Entourage and enter your email info.
8. Now create a single calendar event.
9. Go to Entourage Preferences, and check the Sync Services. (click OK, etc.)
10. Wait 5 minutes, then launch iCal and you will see the Entourage Calendar with your single event.
You should also see your contact that was created when you setup email in the Address Book.
If this worked you've isolated the syncing problem to a corrupt file in your user account or corrupt data in your entourage account.
You can go back to your original user account and delete all the info from entourage to see if you had corrupt data in entourage, (youd did back it up first, right?) or you can follow the procedures below to move all your stuff over to the new login account.
Now you'll need to migrate your data from your Old login account to your new login account.
(I've tried just moving the new Entourage identity back to the old account, and it didn't always work)
The easiest way to move data between accounts is to login as root.
To enable the root user, Go to Utilities, Directory Utility, and under the edit menu, select enable root user, enter a unique password, later you can disable root login when your all done)
Logout of your new login and login as root with the new password you just created
When it prompts for a username type "root". If you don't have that option click the Other login and then type in root as the username and the new password.
Once your logged in as root, be careful as you can pretty much trash anything without any warnings.
Now Open your original user folder located in ~User/youraccount as well as the new user you just created
(not the root account)
Open the folders side by side and drag the contents from old to new:
Desktop
Documents
iTunes
Movies
Music
plus any other info you need.
Log back into your new user account, and run a repair permissions from disk utility.
Launch Entourage and enter a new event and contact. Then wait a few minutes and verify that it made it over to iCal & Address book.
If it did, and it should have, you can then import your entourage archives, do contacts first, then wait a few minutes and verify it shows up in Address Book, then do your Calendar events and verify.
When everything is syncing between entourage and iCal/Address Book you can connect your iPhone and enable syncing.
A few important notes:
-If you have Years worth of Calendar Items in entourage, you will most likely run into problems, so archive your old Events and only restore that which you need.
-You may also need to retrieve old application preferences.
-Once your sure you've got everything, you can delete the Microsoft User Data Original folder that we renamed and put in your Documents Folder.
Hope this helps somebody out.
LJS

Answer 1

Entourage calendar does not sync as you are expecting, with iCal.
Turn your Entourage sync services on (to sync your calendar) and you will notice in iCal a new calendar on the left, called Entourage. Mind has a purple color to it, for example.
Now, in iCal, create a new appointment and assign it TO the Entourage calendar. Now sync, and hey presto it shows up in Entourage.
This is by design, Entourage does not sync ALL of your iCal calendars, it will only sync the Entourage calendar which is created in iCal.
For example, I have Home, Work, Personal and Entourage calendars in iCal - appointments I make with my Home, Work or Personal calendar will not appear in Entourage, period. Only appointments made in iCal using the Entourage calendar will appear in Entourage (after a sync).
Likewise, appointments made IN Entourage Calendar, are sync'd to iCal and are only visible if you show the Entourage calendar in iCal - (it's switched ON by default, but can be switched off by un-ticking the calendar in the left pane of iCal).
Does this make sense?