I wish i had backed up my mails too

[JellyBean]

my outlook crashed all of a sudden 2 hours ago. gave full measure to every site that could have helped. all in vain. I can see my OLM folder clearly. but no other mail client is willing to import that bunch of 80K + mails.
I wished i had backed them up in a different file format or so. don't know how.
any idea how i can access them all? outlook still unwilling to open.

 

[honestone]

I use Outlook 2016 on both of my Macs, and it works flawlessly. Need some more information:

1. What exact Mac model do you have?

2. What exact Mac OS are you running?

3. Are you usingOutlook 2008/Office 2008, Outlook 2011/Office 2011, or Outlook 2016/Office 2016? Outlook 2016/Office 2016 is the only one that is being actively supported by Microsoft.

4. Are you making backups to an external device? That is so, so critical!

5. Have you ever done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs, from a software perspective?

 

[JellyBean]

thanks for your reply honestone.
I use High Sierra on my Mac Air. don't know how, that was a crash all of a sudden. outlook worked somewhere around 3 hours of that incident. Shockingly, every folder was in its place but every mail was empty inside. a 3 hour long hush-push all in vain. I am still trying to figure out how to deal with these corrupted files.
Suggestions needed.

 

[honestone]

You did not state which version of Outlook/Office you are using. I am using Outlook 2016/Office 2016, and I am not having any issues with it (although I have no need to backup individual EMails/EMail "folders"). Yesterday I posted information about the latest version of Office 2016 (and thus Outlook 2016). I'll repeat that link here for you:

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...542-9954-7e3209681a41?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Outlook 2016/Office 2016 is the only one that Microsoft is continuing to update/support.

Also, what exact Mac Book Air model do you have? I have a mid 2013 13" Mac Book Air, with a 252 gig SSD, and it works fine.

And why did you "upgrade" to High Sierra? There are still a fair amount of issues associated with High Sierra, at least from posts I have seen here. I am still using Sierra, OS 10.12.6, and it is as stable as ever. And as of now, there are no major "advantages" for me to upgrade (besides, I am still waiting for a upgrade for Tech Tool Pro for High Sierra compatibility).

By the way, are you aware of how to permanently remove deleted EMails from Outlook 2016? I do that just about every day, and it helps to keep my EMail "stuff" manageable.

 

[JellyBean]

Got my solution in this discussion: https://www.mac-help.com/threads/rebuild-outlook-2011-for-mac-database.220379/
Outlook mac database recovery recovered my outlook mails. I have switched to thunderbird. the tool helped me convert those outlook files to thunderbird supportive.
outlook has got some real issues specially when you upgrade your OS.
thinking to back them up now. Any good tool you would suggest?

 

[honestone]

One person upgraded from Sierra to High Sierra, and has had no issues with Office 2016. In fact, he says that Office 2016 is more responsive with High Sierra.

Microsoft is no longer supporting Office 2011/Outlook 2011, but when I was using Office 2011/Outlook 2011, I had no issues at all whenever I upgraded the Mac OS. Of course, I always kept up to date with Office 2011, an dI am doing the same with Office 2016.

 

[JellyBean]

I am clueless why it happened just to me. While finding out the solution for my problem, I found out, I WASN'T THE ONLY ONE. there are several more sufferers.
As usual, my IT friend proved to be true that crashes can only be cancelled out by backups. This crash has taught me a lot this time. high sierra is doing good now. only the update process had suffocated me.

 

[honestone]

only the update process had suffocated me.

Another compelling reason why I never upgrade to a new Mac OS "in place", ie, I do not allow the new OS to just overwrite what is there already. I always start first (after doing a complete backup with SuperDuper!, of course) by Erasing and Formatting my internal drive (SSDs on both of my Macs), then do a fresh, clean, "virgin" installation of the new Mac OS, and finally "migrating"/copying needed stuff from that last backup. Has always worked flawlessly for me, and I do all this "locally", and thus have MUCH more control over the process.