Forum Discussion
How do I change the alert sounds in Outlook for Mac?
I figured out how to change the default sounds in Outlook for Mac. Basically you have to find the original sound files in Outlook via Finder and overwrite them with the ones you want. Follow the steps below.
1) Quit Outlook
2) Open Finder. Select ‘Applications’ from the left side list.
3) Find Outlook. Right-click on it and select ‘Show Package Contents’ from the list.
4) Open Contents folder and go to ‘Framework’ folder.
5) Look for ‘OutlookCore.framework’ file. Open it.
6) Go to ‘Resources’ folder and look for the mailerror, mailsent, newmail, nomail, reminder, and welcome .wav audio files
7) Rename your custom sounds to match these names and replace the files in the 'Resources' folder. (Your custom sounds must be in .wav format)
😎 Start up Outlook and enjoy your new sounds.
A friend, far more computer savvy than I, changed the default sounds for 'newmail' & 'mailsent' in a new iMac (have had them on an old desktop for years and wanted them on the new one. The new BigSur sounds are too subtle for my partially deaf ears!). It worked fine until I did a full back-up with SuperDuper! a couple days ago. Now the sounds for 'newmail' & 'mailsent' have defaulted back to the BigSur sounds for those.
What to do now, so a back-up doesn't cause a revert to default BigSur v 11.6 sound alerts in Outlook for Mac 2019?
Hi dovoodoo,
I apologize for the late reply here. I had my notifications turned off. One thing I noticed since I have been using custom sounds for Outlook on my mac is that every time Outlook has a software update, it reverts the sounds back to the default tones. I have a feeling that your issue is similar and I have a work around that I have been using. It involves creating a shortcut to the folder where the Outlook default sounds are located so you have easy access, and then overriding the sounds anytime they revert back.
1) Create a new folder and save it somewhere convenient for you
2) Name the folder something like 'Outlook Replacement Sounds' (that's what I did, but you can name it whatever you want)
3) Save all of the replacement sounds you want to use in this folder and make sure they are named after the default Outlook sounds. I think there are 7 in total, I've listed them below.
- goodbye.wav
- mailerror.wav
- mailsent.wav
- newmail.wav
- nomail.wav
- reminder.wav
- welcome.wav
(Note that I do not think the goodbye.wav, welcome.wav or nomail.wav sounds get utilized by Outlook, but I added custom ones to them anyway)
4) Create a shortcut to the folder where the default Outlook sound files are located. It should be called 'Resources'. You can find its location from my original post on how to change the sounds, but I've included the steps below just in case.
Open Finder. Select ‘Applications’ from the left side list
Find Outlook. Right-click on it and select ‘Show Package Contents’ from the list
Open Contents folder and go to ‘Framework’ folder
Look for ‘OutlookCore.framework’ folder. Open it.
Find the ‘Resources’ folder
- Hold the option and command key and then click and drag the 'Resources' folder to the 'Outlook Replacement Sounds' folder from step 2. This will create a shortcut to the Outlook 'Resources' folder.
5) You should now have your custom replacement sound files and a shortcut to the Outlook 'Resources' folder in you 'Outlook Replacement Sounds' folder from step 2. You can utilize this shortcut to easily copy and paste/override the custom sounds back into the Outlook 'Resources' folder since all the files are in one place.
6) When your Outlook sounds revert back to default for whatever reason, quit Outlook, open your 'Outlook Replacement Sounds' folder, select and copy all of your custom sounds and paste them into the 'Resources' shortcut folder to overwrite the defaults. See attached image for what my final 'Outlook Replacement Sounds' folder looks like.
I know this was a long post and hopefully it all makes sense. There are probably better ways to do this automatically with a script or something, but I haven't bothered trying to figure it out. Best of luck!
