I am new to mac. just purchaased it 3 weeks ag along with MS office for mac, i notice that all my outlook email are in this finder folder, can i delete these email files from this location? why are they there anyway?

What finder folder are you talking about?

All your account data should be in your ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data (i.e., in your home directory). This is based on my testing with MS Office 2011 Outlook 14.2.2.

NO, don't delete anything from that icon. By default, in Lion, when you click Finder (the icon with the smiley face), it starts by showing you a search called "All My Files". This is, in my opinion, a very dangerous thing for Apple to do, because it's not a single location, it's a file search spread across all the searchable folders in your drive. There's no sense of context, and the location of files is not clearly shown. In fact, it's actually showing you files from your Outlook database area, among other things.

My recommendation is as follows. While you have a Finder window open, go to the Finder menu (very top left of the screen). Click the menu, then click Preferences. On the General tab, untick the option that says "All My Files". This will remove that shortcut from the Finder sidebar (you can always add it back if you REALLY need it).

And those files you're seeing have nothing to do with Apple, they're the files that Microsoft uses to manage the Outlook message database.

Matt

Cherry63 wrote:

I am talking about the icon on the docking row, that's the guy with the smily face. When you click on him it brings up a bunch of files of what I seem to have store/created on my Imac. There are hundreds of emails and some other documents. I tried to delete a few of them when I first got the MS office but it did not like that, it said it have to rebuild oulook. Why cant i delete these files? is this Apple version of Window outlook PST files?

These file extenssions are listed as

olk14_message or even or ccontact. I wish I could send a screen print but I dont see that on the key board. Maybe I should have stuck with windows..

Oh the ...olk14_message's. Do not delete them behind Outlooks back, i.e., from the finder. Those are the various messages that you sent, received, or deleted in Outlook. They are indexed by Outlook so if you delete behind Outlook's back Outlook will get confused trying to access those messages.

You can delete them however using Outlook itself. In outlook select a mailbox (Drafts, Sent Items, Deleted Items, etc.) by clicking on the mailbox on the left. It will show you the messages in that mailbox. You can now select all or selected items in that mailbox. The click the Edit menu and select Delete. You will get a dialog asking if you really want to delete the selections. Answer "Delete" and the messages will get deleted.

The olk14_message's you are seeing are the actual messages shown the Outlook mail boxes. When you actually delete them the way I just described the corresponding olk14_message files will also be deleted.

Note Outlook's Deleted Items mailbox is where all deleted messages go when you click the Delete tool in the Outlook toolbar. Thus using the Delete tool from the toolbar does not permanently delete the messages. So if you been using that for months or years you are going to have a very large Deleted Items mailbox. And every one of those items in there is going to have a corresponding olk14_message file for that message.

So if those olk14_message files you are seeing are from the Deleted Items mailbox you can get rid of all those corresponding olk14_message files by selecting all the messages in Deleted Items and using the Edit menu's Delete.

Alternative ways to the Edit/Delete to do the permanent delete is select (all) the messages to delete and control (right) click to bring up the Outlook contextual menu and select Delete from it.

Finally if you use the Delete tool in the toolbar for messages selected in the Deleted Items mailbox you will be able to permanently delete those too. It's an exception since using the tool on the Deleted Items means there's no place to put those messages except to "oblivion".

So, in summary, using the Delete tool in the toolbar on messages in every mailbox except the Deleted Items mailbox just moves messages to the Deleted Items mailbox. But using the Delete tool on items in them Deleted Items mailbox permanently deletes the selected items in there. And only permanently deleting items removes the corresponding actual ...olk14_message files.

Yes, I see it. X423424X is saying that you should only delete Outlook messages from within Outlook, as am I.

I'm additionally giving you a way to hide that confusing Finder "folder" (it's not really a folder, as I've explained, it's a collection of all files from all folders) so that you don't accidentally delete things from the Finder that you're not supposed to.

Matt

Cherry63 wrote:

Ok, 423424x, thanks for the information, but let me get this straight, you are saying I can get rid of those olk14 message from the finder file or list if I follow your instructions as you explained above.

I ask this because I only have about 15 messages in my Outlook but in the finder file there are over a 100 Olk14 messages in there. Where are all those messages coming from? Are they from the previous Apple email that I don't use anymore? Or, are they just Olk messages from outlook that are some where hidden, like in my trash that is on the Dock? There are deleted email message there (Olk) that I unknowingly previously deleted but I am afraid to delete them because I don't want to get that outlook rebuild message again! Sorry but I am just confused with Mac MS Outlook. Since I got my new Imac, I really hate this poorly developed finder file that randomly store email files, that's the only thing I hate about this PC.

If you can clarify for me I would really appreciate it. And I will try what you explained above when I get home tonight.

It's funny, at my corporation, we all have Windows PC. There are about 2 people who have personal Apple PCs. They don’t understand either.

Thanks

I played around today some more with Outlook and I seem to now have it in a state where some of those olk14_message do not get removed even when I delete all the items in the Deleted Items mailboxes. Frankly I think it just a bug in Outlook.

The only way I found to completely wipe out those residual olk14_message's is to wipe out the entire Office 2011 Identities folder inside the ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data (while not running Outlook of course). If you only have one account and are willing to recreate it that's one way to get rid of all that old data. Multiple acocunts would mean recreating all those accounts so this is probably not a good technique in that case.

I don't know why Outlook won't remove those files when you delete the Deleted Items (other than being a bug). I did discover that if Outlook thinks the mailboxes are all empty (i.e., shows no items in them) then you could delete those olk14_message's in the Finder. Outlook doesn't seem to be any more confused than it was prior to deleting them.

Welcome to the Mac. Once you sort out your current issue, see these:

Switching from Windows to Mac OS X,
Basic Tutorials on using a Mac,
Mac 101: Mac Essentials,
Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts,
Anatomy of a Mac,
MacTips,
Switching to Mac Superguide, and
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition.

Additionally, *Texas Mac Man* recommends:

Quick Assist,
Welcome to the Switch To A Mac Guides,
Take Control E-books, and
A guide for switching to a Mac.

Ok.

You might want to keep an eye on those olk14_message's and see how they come and go with deletes.

The way I was testing this out was I keep the folder containing them open in the finder so I could see the files come and go. It's buried (nested) pretty deep. In my case it's:

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/Data Records/Messages/0T/0B/0M/0K/

I have no idea why they have to bury it that deep. Leave it to Microsoft. Maybe it's a windows thing.😉

If you didn't empty the trash the stuff is still in the trash (double click the trash can and you will see what's in there). On the other hand if that stuff came from those Outlook folders they are no longer in the Outlook folders as far as Outlook is concerned. So if Outlook is "behaving itself" then it wouldn't matter if you emptied the trash or not.