Mac OS, Outlook

Extract Attachments from Mac OLM Files – Full Tutorial

Overview: In this blog post, we are going to see the steps to extract attachments from Mac OLM files. Here are the below portion which will be covered:

• About OLM file
• Reasons to extract
• Manual ways to save
• Use professional way to extract bulk attachments
• Summary

So, when you come to the end of the article, you will already know all the methods to save attachments from Mac Outlook OLM files.

The Mac version of Microsoft Outlook keeps their mailbox data in an OLM file. This file may include emails, contacts, calendars and notes as well as attachments. So, when a user tries to export his mailbox, then automatically all this data gets saved together in the OLM file.

However, the user does not need the entire email data. They just need to open their attachments from their emails.

Also Read: Extract Attachments from MSG Files

How do OLM Files work in Mac Outlook?

It is responsible for storing data in Microsoft Mac Outlook. There are various information that is stored in OLM file:

• Email messages
• Attachments
• Contacts
• Calendar items
• Notes and tasks

Typically, an OLM file is used when users export the Outlook data for backup or transfer emails to another system. But since all the data is stored within a file, it’s not that easy to extract attachments from it.

Reasons to Save Attachments from OLM Files

There are several points by which you can extract attachments from Mac OLM. Let’s take some of the key pointers:

• Usually, attachments take most of the space of any email mailbox
• For that, you need to save the emails separately, in order to reduce mailbox size
• Emails are very important in our daily life to communicate in the form of files, reports
• It makes it easier to access these files without opening any email
• You can easily move your attachments to different platforms for wider use

Challenges User’s Face with OLM Files

Below are some common scenarios where people find difficulty in using OLM:

• Microsoft Outlook is compulsory to open an OLM file
• Attachments usually need to be saved individually
• Having large OLM files can take much longer time than usual
• As there are no options to extract your attachments in batches manually
• Attachments cannot be easily filtered by file type or size

Because of all this, numerous users search for fast and simple methods to handle large OLM attachments.

Extract Attachments from Mac OLM – Free Methods

There are some manual solutions to save attachments from OLM files. Remember, they are effective only for small mailboxes.

#1. Manually Save Attachments from Outlook OLM Files

This is a very easy way to extract attachments from Mac OLM files. Look into the steps to move forward:

1. Firstly, open Outlook for Mac
2. Next, import the OLM file into your Outlook
3. After that, find the email that which has attachment in it
4. Then, right-click on it
5. Click Save As
6. Select the location where you wish to locate the file

Limitations:

• You have to save every attachments separately
• Not suitable for large OLM files
• It will take a lot of your time, when you have too many emails
• No way to download multiple attachments

#2. Quickly Drag & Drop your Email Attachments 

This is again a free method by which you can extract attachments from Mac OLM.

1. Start with opening Microsoft Outlook into your system.
2. Next, import your desired OLM files
3. Go to the email which has the attachment
4. Hold it down with the mouse and drag the attached item
5. Or you can drop it to any other folder on your Mac system

Limitations:

• Only good if you have a few OLM attachments
• Clearly not useful if you have lots of emails
• You still need to click on individual emails one by one

Drawbacks of Using Manual Solutions

Manual methods may be good, if your email attachment is less. But, as the number of emails increases, users often face problems like:

• The process becomes very slow
• It does not allow you to filter out particular file attachment
• This makes it difficult to send OLM files, especially when they are large

Due to these, a lot of the users move to professional solution for making this process easy.

Salient Features:

• Save all your attachments in a single attempt
• Reduces manual work
• Performs well with large OLM files
• Allows you to filter & extract the attachments which you want
• Maintain the original folder structure as it was before
• Avoid data loss when extracting high amount of data

Tips to Follow:

• Archive your old emails which are of no use.
• Extract your large attachments to reduce mailbox size
• Sort your emails according to its name or project
• Take backup of your important attachments
• Use our professional solution for bulk email extraction

Conclusion

I hope this guide helped you to extract attachments from Mac OLM files using various methods. First you can try manual ones, if you have few attachments to deal with. Further, I would recommend you to choose our professional solution, if you want to save multiple email attachments from OLM files. As, it gives you various filter options for your emails. Lastly, practice the above tips to efficiently manage your inbox.