Restoring Outlook emails from Mac Time Machine Backup

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Restoring Outlook emails from Mac Time Machine Backup

Stacey Kerr 0

I was having issues with my phone getting emails (iOS Mail) but not all of them showing up in my Outlook desktop inbox. I did some digging and it was suggested that I remove and re-add the inbox, and that did indeed fix the issue. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through and it was a POP account. I lost about over a decade's worth of old emails - all I got back were the last 8-12 months when I added the account back. I'm wondering if it's possible to restore the older emails from a Time Machine backup. If that's possible, where would I find the files to restore?

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Answer 1

Hi @Stacey Kerr

I’m sorry to hear that so many years of email disappeared after the POP account was removed and added again. Because POP messages may be stored only in the local Outlook profile, restoring the previous profile from Time Machine may be your best option.

First, quit Outlook and make a copy of your current Outlook profile folder. In Finder, select Go > Go to Folder, then enter:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/

With this folder open, enter Time Machine and restore a version from before the POP account was removed. It is safer to recover the old profile separately rather than overwrite the current one immediately.

You can open Outlook Profile Manager by going to Applications, Control-clicking Microsoft Outlook, selecting Show Package Contents, and then opening Contents > SharedSupport > Outlook Profile Manager. If the restored profile opens and the missing messages appear, export them promptly to an Outlook for Mac archive file (.olm) through Tools > Export.

Please avoid deleting the current profile or making further account changes until you have copied and exported any recovered data. If the older profile is not present in the Time Machine backup and the mail provider no longer has those messages on its server, recovery may not be possible.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further updates, thanks.

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