Manually Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from Mac Outlook – OLK14 Message & OLK15Message File

Have you accidentally deleted your Outlook Mac Mail? We’ve all had that heart-throbbing moment when we trip up and click that delete button by mistake. You might have deleted some unused messages & later realized that the messages you deleted were really important. It might feel like all your hopes are lost, but if you need it back, there are plenty of ways that will help you recover permanently deleted emails from Mac Outlook you’ve lost.

Outlook has made its in-built way to recover its own data that most of the people are unaware about. To know in detail about Restoring deleted email from Mac you have to first understand What is OLK File, OLK14Message & OLK14MSGSOURCE, OLK15Message where it is stored & how to Retrieve Outlook Mac Email using OLK15Message & OLK14 Message Recovery Manually.

Important Note: If you are looking for an instant solution to recover permanently deleted emails from Mac Outlook and don’t want to waste your precious time trying manual methods, then you must consider trying the third-party utility. It is specially developed for users who have hard deleted their emails or other mailbox items and want to recover them quickly. The Outlook Mac Database Recovery Tool is the most recommended software by tech experts and other users when you have permanently lost emails.

What is OLK File : OLK14 & OLK15

The OLK File Format can be referred as an additional resource or reserves for Outlook’s Email & Address Book File which is developed by Microsoft. This file is mostly unknown to the users since contacts in Outlook are frequently saved in Personal Address Book (.pab) files &  messages are stored as OLM file. PAB is a file extension generally used for storing contact information such as phone numbers, name, contact addresses, organization data, and other contact details of people within organizations whereas OLM file stores email messages. Outlook Address Book can be compared to a virtual address book because Outlook does not make use of any additional storage other than data store.

OLK File can be referred as a backup file for Mac Outlook 2011 which can facilitate to recover permanently deleted emails Outlook 2011 mac. There are two types of OLK file associated to store emails : OLK14Message & OLK14MSGSOURCE.

OLK14Message can be referred as an information storage file that capacitates to manage all the header information regarding the emails that arrive in Outlook Mac 2011. But this file does not possess any email body, but instead it stores all the header information. The body of an email is stored in another OLK File named as OLK14MSGSOURCE File. It stores a copy of all the emails in your Outlook 2011 version.

OLK15 are files especially created for Outook 15 for Mac or Office365 for Mac.  Microsoft introduced OLK15Message Outlook for Mac for version v15.3 along with Office 365. This version is available only for Office 365 commercial purpose users like Office 365 Personal, Office 365 Home & Office 365 University special users.

MIME Type of OLK File : application/octet-stream

How to recover deleted items from Outlook 2011 Mac – OLK15 & OLK14 Message Recovery

While you download message in your email Client, Outlook Mac automatically creates a local copy of your mail messages in OLK14MSGSOURCE files that may aid to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook 2011 mac in future.

You can find these files stored within the subdirectories of:

• Location of OLK Message Body : OLK14MSGSOURCE

Username\Documents\MicrosoftUserData\Office2011Identities\MainIdentity\Data Records\Messages_Source\OM\OB\OT

• Location of OLK Message Header: OLK14Message
  Username\Documents\MicrosoftUserData\Office2011Identities\MainIdentity\Data Records\Messages\OM\OB\OT

• Step 1: Outlook Mac Stores your Data within the Data Records Sub-directory. Apart from these files, there are additional files which may help to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook 2011 Mac.
• Step 2: After opening the Data Records > Messages, you might be unable to locate your email messages. The reason behind is, emails here are stored according to size & not according to Folder as Stored in Email Clients like Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts etc. This OLK14MESSAGE File is a file created to indicate the index of the search feature in Mac namely, Spotlight.
  You cannot open the OLK14 Message file as mentioned above because it contains only the header information which is incapable to recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook 2011 Mac. Even though you can access the file, you cannot edit them.

Understanding : Spotlight & OLK Message relation for locating OLK14Message File

When you are actually searching a Message in Spotlight, it is not a message body file but you are indirectly asking for the OLK14 Message File (which stores Index for Spotlight consisting of header file). This is the reason when you find your messages it displays an error message displaying Outlook cannot open email file because this file not associated with Default Identity. It depicts the fact that although the OLK14 Message file has Outlook Icon, but it is not an Outlook File & you cannot recover deleted items from Mac.

How to Recover a Single OLK14 Message File?

Recover OLK14Message File Through Spotlight

You cannot directly open the OLK File through Spotlight because of the reason mentioned earlier

In order to recover permanently deleted emails from outlook 2011 Mac, follow the steps:

• Open Spotlight & Search the specific message.
• Press the Option & Command Key on Mac Keyboard and Click on the message within the Spotlight. This will open up the OLK14Message with a specific number.
• Go Back to the location OLKMessage14> OM > OB > OT >Messages. This index file is located inside the message folder
• Now, to find the original message body from where you can recover permanently deleted emails from Outlook 2011 Mac, Go to Message_Source Folder> OT>OB>OM. This message Source folder also consists of a similar set of messages as in messages Folder.
• To locate the original message, Subtract “1” from the OLK14Message file. For instance, if Spotlight found a Message file with OLK14MESSAGE “27611” in its name then the original message body will be in OLK14Message_Source file number will be “27611 – 1 = 27610”. In Brief, if the message header is in x00_27611.olk14Message then its corresponding Message body will be in x27_27610.olk14MsgSource which contains data for restoring deleted email mac Outlook.

• You cannot copy the original file or move this file to Desktop or any local folder for temporary location neither you can open them directly.
• You may start Restoring deleted email from Mac Outlook files by simply renaming the file extension from .olk14Message_Source to EML.
  (Note: One of the disadvantages you can face while renaming the file to .eml Extension is indexing of other messages may change while you try to rename the file.)

Conclusion

Recovery of deleted emails must be performed carefully to retrieve back the entire data without experiencing any kind of data loss. The above method may help you to view single email file at a time. For bulk Restoring deleted email from Mac Outlook you can make use of OLK Viewer or OLK Converter Software to convert OLK14 files for effectively regaining all the Outlook data without any loss to Recover Permanently Deleted Emails from Mac Outlook 2011.