Mac Outlook Backup Setup
How to take Mac Outlook Backup and make it automatic? Backing up your data in regular intervals is the best habit you can acquire for your own peace of mind. The worst of the horrors you can possibly imagine is losing your important with no way to get it back, or to spend thousands of dollars to pay a professional recovery software or services.
This is no where as important as with emails and email clients like Mac Outlook.
Mac Outlook Archive (OLM file)
Now, with Mac Outlook, you can easily export or archive your data to an OLM file manually. Just go to the ‘Tools’ tab and pick ‘Export‘ and follow the rest of instructions. This will get your chose items archived into a new OLM file that you can later use in Mac Outlook.
But doing it manually is not so much effective as setting an automatic backup system in place. Most users forget to backup their Mac Outlook data. It only comes to mind when something bad like data corruption or loss has already happened, after which backup makes no sense.
Unfortunately, there’s no in-built feature in Mac Outlook that you can use for automatic backup. But there’s a solution that works very well.
TimeMachine for Mac Outlook Backup
It’s smartly called ‘TimeMachine.’ And it is actually a priceless Mac feature that does more than than just give you a sci-fi feel while repeatedly calling out the word ‘TimeMachine.’
So, as it sounds, it keeps the backup of your Mac data automatically for you. Therefore, in case of ill-fated events, you can go back to your backups and restore your data to an earlier time.
This applies to Mac Outlook as well. To use this feature, you need an external storage (like a hard drive connected to a USB, Thunderbolt port on your Mac, an AirPort Time Capsule, etc.)
Here’s how to easily do it:
- – Upon connecting your external drive, you will be automatically asked if you want to use the drive as a backup disc. If this doesn’t happen, you can manually go to Apple Menu –> System Preferences –> and choose ‘TimeMachine’
- – Select ‘Use as Backup Disk’
- – Open ‘Options’ and check if Mac Outlook is selected as one of the programs for backup. You can select everything to make a backup of your entire Mac data, or choose selective programs/folders, etc.
Naturally, it will take a lot of time since this will be your first backup. Future backups will be faster, because it will only consider the files that underwent any changes since last time.
“TimeMachine” offers a lot of features and options (like setting up time for backup, an option to backup right now as opposed to later on, to check the backup status, and so on).
An important point to consider:
Mac Outlook natively uses OLM format to save data. OLM is a proprietary file format from Microsoft that is not compatible with any other application or email client. Therefore, many users feel backing up a large Mac Outlook database in OLM format is restricting their future uses and maximizing the risk. A better option to do it in EML file format, which is more generic and can be applied to many programs and clients.
To do that, you might need a third-party application. If you are up for that, you can use “OLM Extractor Pro” as one of the quickest and safest tools to do that. It’s technically an email migration tool, since it actually converts the OLM files to EML files. You can download the free trial version here.
However, even if you use the tool to keep a backup of Mac Outlook in standard EML files, you still need to use ‘TimeMachine‘ to at least let it automatically backup data to OLM files.