Reinstalling MS Outlook 2011

[drsox]

I want to reinstall this but I'm not sure if I can simply just copy the email store to a temp location and copy back again.
As I understand it, the email store is the "database" file in Microsoft User Data>Outlook 2011 Identities>Main Identity.
Can I get away with just copying this or should I copy back the whole of the Microsoft User Data folder structure ?

Thanks.

 

[squeakr]

How is you mail handled? If it is on an exchange server and housed there, you may not need to copy anything, just reconnect to the server and pull it down, and just back up your local archives?

 

[drsox]

It's a POP server and I think all my emails are on my MBA. The POP server deletes them once I have accessed them.
If I mess up my local store then all the history etc is gone.

In Win7 it's easy to retrieve emails - just copy back the .pst file. The OSX version seems to be a bit more integrated into the local user data structure.

 

[vistadude]

You can make a file similar to .pst on the mac version of Outlook.

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_back_and_restore_mail_outlook_2011

I wish Time Machine weren't so bad so that Outlook for mac could use .pst by default.

 

[drsox]

Brilliant - thanks.

I wish Outlook was as easy to use with a network as the Win7 version. There I can put the .pst store on a LAN NAS if I wish and avoid Time Machine altogether.

 

[vistadude]

You can if you map a network drive to a letter, but I wouldn't recommend it since network drives are usually quite slow.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/connect-to-a-network-drive-HP005231456.aspx

It would be better to get an exchange account with office 365 rather than deal with pop, or set your outlook to keep the pop mail on the server.

 

[drsox]

Doesn't work very well in OSX because Outlook doesn't allow the email store to be located outside the local user document location. Yes, I know it's possible with symlinks, but they are unreliable and reset.

In Win7 I used mapped drives all the time for all my data store locations. Mine were located on a RAID NAS at the end of a Gb LAN, so fast enough. IMO it's only for game playing that data needs to be held locally.