How to automatically Backup Outlook Mac 2011 / 2016 / 2019 Office 365 E-mails on Mac OS X?

Are you looking for the best possible options to back up individual, multiple emails, or mail folders you added to your Outlook Mac 2011 / 2016 / 2019 / Microsoft office 365 Mac Mail Clients? On top of setting up an automated backup of Mails from Outlook Mac, you also want the ability to search through the backed-up emails/attachments archived mail data and view or retrieve them as and when required. 

Some online guides suggest dragging emails onto the “On My Computer” Folder in Outlook Mac to do a backup of Outlook Mac Mails from time to time. 

In contrast, all it does is just add up data to the Microsoft Identity folder, thus increasing the folder size. It is one of the significant reasons to slow down Outlook Mac performance by hogging memory and increases the probability of a software crash. 

Some Guides suggest to drag and drop emails to a folder on the desktop. However, it is just a pain to restore the emails or search through emails properly if you ever end up with an Outlook crash or a Dead Mac.

1. Back up Outlook Mac 2011 / 2016 Mails to an OLM Archive manually – Time Consuming and cumbersome method

Outlook’s simple inbuilt option is to Export Outlook Emails to Outlook Mac Archive files (.olm) dumps from time to time. In the case of a crash, you may use these to reimport the emails to your Outlook. To make it simpler, you may choose to 

1. Setup by adding a new category in Outlook, name it ‘Outlook Mac Backup.’
2. Add a new rule, and name it ’30 days Outlook Mac Backup’, choose to add all email with a date sent/received older than 30 days.
3. Press Control + click & apply the ‘30 days Outlook Mac Backup‘ rule to Your entire Outlook Mac mailbox.
4. Set a reminder to self to do File > Export in Outlook, and choose only to export mail data belonging to the category ‘Outlook Mac Backup.’
5. This way, you will get an OLM file of emails older than 30 days, which can be reimported locally if ever required during an emergency.

However, this option is still not full proof, as sometimes during the export process, the .olm files tend to get corrupted and becomes unusable, and this beats the purpose of having an Outlook Mac backup using this method. 

2. Automatically Backup Outlook Mac 2011 / 2016 / 2019 / Microsoft Office 365 Mails using Professional & Easy to use Mail Backup Solution for Mac OS X 

Mail Backup X takes the worry out of the tedious process and automates the task to Backup Outlook Mac Mails on your Mac. So, you can have your peace of mind while concentrating on more important tasks with your day to day business. Mail Backup X not only lets you backup your Outlook Mac emails & attachments but uses compression to save on your disk space. You can browse and search through the Mail data. You will also love this very intuitive feature of copying an Auto-snapshot to USB drive / Cloud space of your business-critical local backed up data for added safety.

Step By Step Guide on Backing up Outlook Mac 2011 / 2016 /2019 Microsoft Office 365 emails on Mac 

Step 1: Please download and install the Mail Backup X Application on your Mac. Please follow the link for Install Instructions

Step 2: Once the installation is completed. Launch Mail Backup X from the Applications / Quick Launch Menu.

Step 3: You may start the fully functional trial run for 15 days or activate it if you have already purchased a license.

Step 4: Please select the option to set up a New Backup Profile from the Dashboard by choosing option “Setup a new Backup”

Or You May Click My Backup Profiles on the Left side Bar in Dashboard > and Click “Set up a new Backup Profile”

Step 5: You Will be presented options of popular Mail Clients Supported by Mail Backup X > Choose Microsoft Outlook and proceed to next step

The App is intelligent to locate all installations on your system related to Microsoft Outlook be it 2011, 2015, 2019 or Office 365. It will display the list of identities found. Please Choose Main Identity for the version for which you would like to backup email data.

Step 6: Mail Backup X will Read and display the Folder structure specified by you in Outlook Mac Mail Accounts. Please select/ deselect the folders you would like to be automatically backuped from Outlook Mac 2011 / 2015/ 2019 / office 365. Let the check box stay checked for Automatically backup newly detected folders under selected folders. It will allow the app to backup any new folders you create under the selected folders in future.

Click continue to move to next step.

Step 7: Now you are presented with Advanced options like setting:

1. Frequency of Mail backup ( select Automatic as its recommended or you may choose Manual or recurring at particular intervals).
2. Secure your backup archive by encrypting the data. So, it can only be viewed on this computer.
3. You May also activate the USB Auto Snapshot option by assigning a USB drive. So, whenever you connect the USB drive, It automatically makes a snapshot copy of your local mail backup to the USB Drive in the background automatically.

Step 8: You can Set the location of backup to local disk drive or Cloud service by authenticating and adding Cloud Space ( at Present Google Drive, DropBox and Microsoft One Drive are supported) .

Step 9: Outlook Mac Mail Backup Profile is set up and now your emails should have started to back up as per the options and settings you selected during the previous steps. After the progress bar is completed, you will notice a Green Check mark next to the Status suggesting the Mail Backup is Completed.