Emails are so common and rich of data these days that it’s very common for any email client to quickly become sluggish and slow. This is due to the increase in the size of ‘identity’ or ‘profile’ folders database. More emails you get, the largest your database gets.
Outlook for Mac taking up a lot of space
Outlook for Mac, from Microsoft, has the same problem. Outlook client can get very slow and might even start functioning incorrectly due to the oversizing of the identity folders. And this problem gets even worse if you are the kind of the user who gets large files as attachments. Because everything gets stored in identity folders.
If you are noticing slow performance or other issues, it’s much likely that the database has grown beyond its regular capacity. It’s time to clean the mess up.
Deleting emails work (obviously). But you certainly cannot delete entire folders to clean up space as there would be plenty of important data inside them. And you certainly cannot go through the entire database, deleting each email separately.
The best way to get rid of size problem is archive and export your old data that you don’t use but might in the future. You can export your previous years emails and other items to an archived OLM file format and keep it safe for future use.
Keep in mind that the automatic ‘Archive’ button in Outlook 2016 and 2012 is for archiving data to a single folder called ‘Archive.’ But that folder still remains in your server or with Outlook identities. That does’t affect the overall size of your database. Therefore, you also need to export the archived data to a file called OLM.
It’s quite simple:
- – On the ‘Tool’s tab, choose ‘Export’
- – On the next screen, choose the type of items (mails, contacts, calendar, etc.) you want to export.
- – Choose the folder to save the OLM file
- – Click ‘Finish’ once Outlook has finished archiving and exporting data.
Note that the above method is for Outlook 2016. With previous 2011 edition of Outlook, you have to follow a slightly different steps:
- On the ‘File’ menu, click ‘Export’
- Choose ‘Outlook for Mac Data File’
- Check the items you want to archive and export
- Choose the folder to save the file
Both versions are similar, but in Outlook 2011, you do not get the ‘Export’ button directly under the ‘Tool’s tab; you have to go to ‘File’ to get it.
Save the OLM file somewhere safe.
Now, delete the data you archived just now from the Outlook to save space. Do it carefully, lest you delete the contents that you didn’t export. You might lose your data forever.
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