Sorry for the long post, but I'm at a loss for an answer.

Using Office 2008 on an Intel 2.8GHz iMac with 4GB RAM, OS X 10.5.7. My Office Identities 2008 folder is on its own partition on a firewire external HD with an alias on the Macintosh HD pointing to it and has worked perfectly that way for months.

After installing the MS Office 2008 12.2.0 update, Entourage started hesitating at a number of different points. It hesitates in the middle of typing an e-mail, while scrolling through lists, clicking on "Send", or one of the buttons on the toolbar changing between mail, calendar, addresses, etc., at least that I've noticed so far.

I tried rebuilding the database, however, it never completed successfully after numerous attempts. Then rolled the program back to 12.1.9 and tried the rebuild which worked with no problem. Program also seemed not to hesitate anymore, and after a week, I foolishly reinstalled the SP2 update.

The hesitation came back and again the database rebuild did not work, so I rolled back to 12.1.9, figuring I now knew the fix. Wrong. Even after the roll-back, while database rebuild works, the hesitation remains. I've even deleted the program, reinstalled and updated to 12.1.9 and can't solve the issue.

The other partitions on the external HD work with no problem, so don't believe its a HD issue, and I've even erased the Identities partition and copied the file back to it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Why do you have your user identity on a separate partition?
Is the db that big?
If it is, start cleaning out old email, especially ones with attachments.
Then try rebuilding the db.

You might also want to try moving it back to the documents folder and see if it improves

I have never found the Entourage db to be that stable and I don't even try to rebuild it any more.
Every time it hiccups, I just pitch it and let it re-sync, but my mailbox is on an Exchange server.
If you're using Entourage as your home email client, you don't have that option.

I have the Office 2008 Identities on an external HD because I need to access the database on multiple computers at different locations. I do make regular backups, but have found that this way, I'm always up to date wherever I am.

Database is not large at all. Uses less than 3 GB. I did try moving it back to Documents, but it made no difference in performance.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Rich the situation you describe is exactly why IMAP was created as an alternative to POP. With IMAP email accounts your messages and folders are stored on the IMAP server, not in the database on any one computer. That way no matter which computer you are using you have all the same messages in all the same folders. Switching from POP to IMAP would eliminate your problem neatly.

If your email provider does not support IMAP you can do what many have done and switch to a GMail IMAP account that automatically "fetches" the messages from your regular account, lets you know what account the message came from in case you have multiple accounts and can even reply as your other account. It might make your email life a lot easier.

Thought I'd post this for anyone else having this problem.

I started having other delay issues, spinning beachball, etc., and really had no idea what was going on. Since I have duplicate SuperDuper external drive backups of everything plus Time Machine and sometimes get a little daring, I decided to try an Archive & Install of Leopard. Figured I had nothing to lose.

Worked like a charm and my system is now running like it did the first day I got it. So far, the only file I've had to bring over from the Archive is a monitor profile, which I could have just created a new one.

I moved from a PC to a Mac last year wanting more stability & getting tired of semi-annual formatting, reinstallation of Windows (XP) with the attendant forever task of restoring programs, files, setting, etc. Once I decided to bite the bullet, it was about an hour to get my Mac back to prime condition. What a difference!!!!!