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Message Attachments in Outlook 2016 for Mac

Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile/Data/Message Attachments has 256 folders named 0 thru 255. Can anyone tell me why these folders are continually being written with data? It's up to 833GB right now and I don't have anything near this volume of data in my attachments in Outlook. Is it safe to delete any of this data? It's constantly growing in size. 

You can delete all the unwanted attachments which are lying in your bin.

deleting unwanted data would reduce the space in the device to store important data.

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Support advised me against deleting these files. They are all .olk15MsgAttachment files, which they said are database files. Is that right, or am I okay to delete those? There are over 2000 files in the Message Attachment folder that are over 24MB in size. 

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I opened one of my files in TextEdit and in the header it said it is a .png picture, although it has a code wrapper around it to make it a database file so I couldn't open it directly in a graphics editor. 

Are you sure you don't have a hidden folder in your list of mail folders?

Be sure to include the version number and OS version when asking your question.

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I don't think so. I certainly don't have a mail folder that has 830GB in it. I've deleted a lot of mail trying to get this down. But the Message Attachments folder isn't affected. I deleted 5GB of mail (which was most of my mail) and the Message Attachments folder is only bigger. Am I right to assume this folder shouldn't be any bigger than the sum total of the mail in my account? Why is it growing when I'm deleting?

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It seems something is really weird with your attachments since you say it's constantly growing. Here's what I recommend to do. 

1. If all your data is on the server, delete the whole profile - (Main Profile) and then resync all your accounts. 

2. If you have local data you can do one of the following:

- Export the local data you want to keep using olm 

- Remove the profile 

- Resync accounts by adding them again in a new profile 

- Import your data via olm import 

Also check your account size on server too. Seems like some sort of constant duplication is going on. 

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Another diagnostic to try is to View > Synch Status and View > Synch Errors. Do you see anything unusual in either dialog?
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Hello, were you able to get this resolved? I am having the same issue and technical support does not seem to know why. 

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My situation: all Accounts were connected through IMAP

Action taken:

  1. Exit Microsoft Outlook
  2. Start a Terminal
  3. sudo bash
  4. Use "ps" to ensure Outlook is NOT running
  5. Change Directory (cd) to the ~/Library/Group Containers/..../Main Profile/Data/ folder
  6. Move ( mv "Message Attachments" MA )
  7. Create Directory ( mkdir "Message Attachments" )
  8. Start Microsoft Outlook
  9. Check messages okay and seems attachments downloaded from server again.
  10. In the Terminal remove the MA folder ( rm -rf MA )

And successfully clean up 122GB of attachments (out of all my IMAP mailboxes total 2GB quota only)


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Last updated November 27, 2023 Views 24,750 Applies to: