Entourage 2008 for Mac may lose the connection to your e-mail account on an Exchange Server

Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac may lose the connection to your e-mail account on an Exchange Server. You do not receive an error message when this problem occurs. Additionally, you do not receive new e-mail messages.

This problem occurs because Entourage 2008 for Mac does not automatically re-subscribe to your e-mail account when it loses connection if the e-mail account is configured to use an Exchange Server back-end cluster node or a Network Load Balancing Server (NLBS) front-end node and a server failover occurs.

A server failover occurs when the primary node of an Exchange Server cluster fails and the cluster switches to another node and makes that node the primary node. When this occurs, Entourage 2008 for Mac will lose its connection to the server.

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods.

Method 1: Restart Entourage

You can reestablish the connection to the Exchange Server. To do this, exit Entourage 2008 for Mac, and then reopen the program. Entourage 2008 for Mac will connect to the new primary node on the Exchange Server and download any new e-mail messages that are present on the server.

Method 2: Open another folder

You can force Entourage 2008 for Mac to reconnect to the Exchange Server. To do this, select the Address Book folder or the Calendar folder for the Exchange e-mail account. By opening the Address Book or Calendar folders, Entourage 2008 for Mac will log on again to the Exchange Server and download new e-mail messages.

Method 3: Send a new message

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click New Message.
2. Address the message to your own e-mail address.
3. Click Send.
4. In the navigation pane, click the Outbox folder.
5. When the message leaves the Outbox folder and moves to the Sent Items folder, click the Inbox folder.

Entourage 2008 for Mac can now download new messages from the server.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.