I'm using Entourage 2004 (fully updated) and I have a Hotmail account I access via Entourage. For no apparent reason, and despite all rules telling Entourage not to do this, the app is automatically moving most messages to the trash. It's also moving them to the local inbox (again despite orders), but that's not as bothersome as the trash issue. The moved messages seem to primarily be list messages such as my LEM-swap emails, but are not all list messages.

Has anyone run across this, and is there a fix? As far as I can tell this didn't start happening until the latest MS "fix" was applied to Office 2004. I'm uninstalling and reinstalling (but not updating) Office now to hopefully take care of this, but I'd really like to know how this problem can be prevented or otherwise solved. I've searched MS's knowledge base and see a few refs to this problem in the newsgroups but so far no definitive fix.

Try temporarily disabling all rules (un-check them) and see if it still trashes your mail when you get new hotmail.

If it no longer trashes your mail then it was a mail rule.

If it still trashes your mail then it's the junk mail filter. Lower the threshold in your Junk E-mail Protection settings.

If it seems to be a mail rule, pull some of the hotmail messages from the trash and put them in your in-box. Then activate a couple of rules at a time, select the hotmail messages and choose Apply Rule: All Rules to the messages to see if one that you've just activated is the culprit. Continue on in this fashion until you find the problem-rule.

Just speculation, but have you recently renamed or deleted a mail folder? Because mail rules link to the folder by ID, not by name, even though you see the name in the Rule settings. So if you've been messing with your folder-hierarchy, it could throw off your mail rules pretty badly.

No changes to folders at all, no name changes or hierarchy changes. Literally the only change was the update MS distributed. I have 2 rules set up for the Hotmail account, both set to change the message category and do nothing else. I have 2 mailing lists set up, one for LEMswap and one for something else. The junk mail filter is set at the lowest level.

I did try deleting and rewriting the rules to no avail. I did try pulling the messages back into the inbox and reapplying the rules. They went nowhere (which is what they were supposed to do - nothing).

1. Rebuild the database. Do this by holding down the Option key during startup.

2. Be sure that your Hotmail account (or accounts) is in your address book. Either add it to your existing Contact for yourself, or add another one, just for this email account.

2. If that doesn't work, the fastest way to test the problem is to create a second, new Identity. To do this, shut down all other Office apps, including the Office Notifications. Then go to the menu: Entourage: Switch Identity, and hit New in the resultant window. It'll try to give you a wizard of sorts, just cancel all that and quickly just add your Hotmail address (and perhaps one other), and then send yourself some test emails. If the Hotmail emails don't end up in the trash, you either have a corrupted database, or as MacMagus pointed out, there's something doing on with your Rules. Rules are pretty easy to get twisted up.

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