How to Backup Entourage Email Folders on Mac Computers
Entourage is a discontinued mailing service provided by Microsoft. It is used to be part of the MS Office Suite for Macintosh computer. It was replaced by Outlook for Mac in Office 2011. It was a personal information manager which could create emails, notes, tasks, address books and calendars. It was a desktop-based client that worked with IMAP and POP3 accounts. This technology is obsolete but some customers still have their old emails in Entourage. Many are still working with older versions of Office suites. They do not wish to upgrade or remove as they are quite familiar with it. Keeping in mind those people, this post describes ways to backup Entourage email folders. This archive of Entourage database can be copied to another drive on the same computer or on a different computer. Read more to find out the best approach to save Entourage emails in a backup.
Instant Solution: If you want to backup Entourage Email Folders quickly & easily then you can try third party tool for the conversion of mac .mbox files.
How to Archive Entourage Email Folders on Mac
Entourage saves all its data in a huge database. It does not have a separate storage file of each mailbox folder. Every time data is sent, received or stored in Entourage the database file becomes bigger. This database needs to be located on the Mac machine and backed up using manual methods. There are few ways through which users can backup Entourage database. Some of them have been described below.
Solution#1 Manual Approach – Time Machine Backup
Time Machine is a backup software provided by Macintosh for their users. It takes back up of all user data and saves it on an archive. It operates every hour to backup data saved on user’s computer. The user profile and data are present in the Main Identities folder on a Mac computer. Once this folder is located, then one can simply backup Entourage email folders using the Time machine backup utility. Here are steps on how to archive Entourage email Folders on Mac.
- Initially, quit Entourage Application. This procedure involves deleting and recreating Main Identities folder on Mac. If the Entourage application is not closed properly, there may be chances of corruption or data discrepancies.
- Next, go to the Home Folder within Macintosh user profile and locate Documents folder.
- From there, open the Microsoft User Data. Within it will be Office 2008 Identities folder( or office 2004 depending on the type of Office Suite still being used).
- Next, open that folder and find Main Identities folder. There might be more than one main identities folder depending on the number of accounts configured on Entourage.
- Then, Browse through each folder to identify database with the current date. This will be the Main Identities folder containing the Entourage database that needs to be backed up.
- Following that, copy the folder by holding down the option key to a different folder under Users folder. Rename the folder by ‘Entourage Backup’ or use the current date as the folder name. This ensures that the email client does not confuse between identities within the Users folder.
- Now, Time machine will automatically backup Entourage Email Folders. This data will be saved to the Time machine drive. Create backups for different dates, with different names.
Solution#2 Using MBOX File Format
Entourage saves emails in more than one ways. All the emails saved individually have a .eml extension. So, if a single email is dragged away from the emailing application. And then, dropped anywhere on the local machine it becomes an EML file. Similarly, if a mailbox folder is dragged and dropped on the computer it becomes a MBOX file. This .mbox file is a backup of mailbox folder items saved in a single file. This file can be taken elsewhere to a separate drive on the system or on another system. Both EML and MBOX formats are quite popular among desktop-based email clients. They can be accessed through any of the popular emailing application and viewed by users.
Solution#3 Alternative Solution- Use a Third-Party Tool
This is an easy and obvious solution considering all the risks and workmanship required to backup Entourage Email Folders. These are an efficient and simple solution available in the market. It caters the needs of those still using Entourage emailing platform for their emailing and communication purpose. These are professional solutions that backup Entourage database with attachments & can even save Entourage .mbox files into other file format like Outlook PST/EML/PDF or MSG format.
Final Words
There are a lot of ways through which backup of Entourage database can be taken. There are a number of ways described in this post. All of them work perfectly depending on the needs of the users. Often it is seen that manual methods are very long and tiring. They take up a lot of time and considered irrelevant. In light of the growing list of alternatives available in the market, manual approach can be deemed unnecessary and unprofessional. These are third-party tools that need to be discussed while considering to backup Entourage email folders. One such tool has also been described in this article to archive entourage email folders on Mac. Users should consider the pros and cons involved with each solution and decide accordingly.