Is it Safe to Delete Office 2011 Identities For Mac Data Records: Yes or No?
“I use Office for Mac 2011 and recently, I found multiple backup copies of my ‘Office for Mac 2011 Identity’. These files have a large storage space and need additional hard drive space for storage. I want to know that Can I delete the older backups copies of my Office identity? Moreover, I also want to ask that is it save to delete Office 2011 identities for mac records or not?”
Now, when the user makes use of Outlook for Mac Operating system then by default all the data is stored in an OLK database at the back end. The user can access this data in the form of OLM file. The OLM file is not created by default the user has to generate this file with the help of Export feature.
However, Outlook is supposed to store messages separately from the Database file. The major purpose is to make Time Machine backups and similar management much easier. But, it is noticed that with a brand new Outlook database, one message with 5MB attachment immediately grew the Database file itself by 5 MB. Now, its time to speculate whether the Outlook database file really was storing attachments separately or not.
Let Us Understand:
How Outlook Database Works?
The Outlook database also contains data records and indices. Basically, data records are the actual messages themselves. On the other hand, indices are like the index of a book, helping to quickly find a message. Moreover, Indices are intended to be frequently accessed while the content is displayed in real-time. Assuming that, the message list seen in the Inbox is drawn from the indices of the database. When the message is opened and displayed, the content is drawn from the data records.
Now, Outlook stores only the indices in the Database file and stores the data records as a series of file nested with folders. The Database file and its folders are located here:
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/Database ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/Data Records
The Database file is actually better thought of as the Index. Indices are generated from data records over time. When a user gets a new message, indices are updated and that data record is stored by the user. For this reason, if a catastrophic failure occurs when there is ‘no value’ to backing-up the index. In such a situation, Outlook rebuilds the index file by reading each data record.
Why is Outlook 2011 Increase Mailbox Size Scenario Occurs?
Outlook does store attachments and mail messages with the Data Records folder. However, it stores them separately. When a message with an attachment is received, the attachment information is temporarily stored in the indices first instead of moving to its final place within the Data Records folders. This makes the Database file to grow. Additionally, when data is removed the blocks that stored the data are not recovered to shrink the data. Instead, they are left in place to be reused by new data. This implies that the user’s Index file will typically be the size of all the indices needed by Outlook plus the largest attachment the user has received in Outlook.
Final Words
In the above section, we have explained the complete concept of Microsoft Office 2011 Identities data records. Additionally, yes, it is safe to delete Office 2011 identities for mac data records but only on one condition that is the user must have a backup. Also, the scenario is also described to reduce mailbox size of Outlook mac 2011 in detail.