Forum Discussion
Some calendar and contact folder are missing on outlook mac
On my friend notebook in outlook (outloook 365 on mac, classic) suddenly some items disappeared from local machine folders.
These items were custom named calendras, contacts, tasks etc., not the default ones!
Of course I tried the usual troubleshoot steps: outlook restart, machine restart, turn on/off local machine folders in preferences. None of this helped.
Finally I checked the "Outlook.sqllite" database, looking for these items in the folders table: they are not found in the sqllite database.
At first it seems that outlook deleted all items under local machine folder (without any user interaction), and recreated the default empty local items for contact, calendar and tasks. Years of data are lost :(
Question: is there any suggestion what could happend? Is there any tip from the community how to recover these items?
("Of course" my friend has no time machine backup.)
2 Replies
Oh man, losing local calendars and contacts like that sucks, especially without a backup.
What probably happened: Outlook for Mac might have reset or corrupted your friend’s profile and wiped those custom local folders. Since they’re not synced anywhere, and missing from the database, they’re likely gone.
Without a backup, chances are low to get them back, but you could try a Mac file recovery app to dig for deleted Outlook files.
For next time, tell your friend to back up regularly or use cloud sync to keep stuff safe.
Want me to share simple steps for recovery apps or backups
Outlook go to Preferences > Accounts, uncheck and re-check the Calendar Synchronization option, select Full Synchronization to manually rebuild the local data, or missing to check the server-side permissions, or use the web version of Outlook to access it.
