Outlook rebuild results in folders named Recovered

This article is going to focus on the issue where your folders have the generic name “Recovered Folder” after rebuilding. This is a new procedure, it’s too soon to know if this will work for everyone. It’s also possible this option will work for other unsuccessful rebuild issues as well. Please leave a comment to let us know if it works for you. (See addendum at end for other options it will recover. Check back for additional updates)

See Basics for a Successful Rebuild for help rebuilding your Identity.

Recovered Folders

If you see the recovered folder issue shown in the image,  you are first grateful you got your data back,  but if you have hundreds or even thousands of folders  you are then faced with organizing and naming your folders. This can consume hours of your time. Luckily, there is a way to recover your folder names.

Requirements

• A minimum of 300-500 GB of free space on your drive
• This process requires you to revert to Office for Mac 2011 v14.1.0
• The original corrupted identity not one that has been rebuilt resulting in the Recovered Folder issue.
• Lots of patience

If you don’t have the free space, patience or expertise, you can contact me for recovery. However, as long as you have the hardware and time, this is very doable by most users.

Free Space:

Many users will think that the amount of free space required is excessive. Like Entourage recovery, it does take enormous amounts of free space. The size of the Identity, the amount of corruption, fragmentation on drive, RAM are all factors that will determine how much space is required to rebuild. I suspect many will go ahead and try this when they don’t have the free space and if it does work, please let us know and give your details so others can determine what’s feasible for their recovery. Be sure you are working off a copy. If the rebuild fails on a drive without enough free space, it could damage your data even further.

Outlook user, Rod reported the following:

My database is 12.7GB and I had 120GB of free space on my hard drive, but that failed to recover. It even failed to rebuild a non-corrupted identity. And so I freed up some space and tried again with 200GB of free space on my hard drive, but that failed too. I freed up even more space and tried again with 310GB of free space on my hard drive, and that succeeded to build. (WIERD BUT VERY TRUE)

See Basics for a Successful Rebuild for help rebuilding your Identity and for more info on free space.

The amount of RAM does not seem to be an issue as long as the free space is available. I do recommend that you do not try to use your computer or have other applications open when doing this process. I did this on a partition with Snow Leopard and 2GB RAM. Lion/Mountain Lion would require more RAM than Snow Leopard. I suggest a minimum of 4GB for Lion and 8GB for Mountain Lion.

Step 1

Determine if you are going to use your main drive (internal) or an external drive. Space considerations will be key in this selection. If you don’t have an external, now is a good time to get one. After this test you can use it to clone your drive and/or create a Time Machine backup.

Option 1) Use your computer’s drive

It’s recommended that you have a backup of your drive before proceeding. There is always a chance you will make a mistake that would damage or delete your data.

1) Delete Microsoft Office 2011 in Applications. (I suggest you compress (zip) so you can revert at the end of this process. After compressing,  drag the Microsoft Office 2011 folder to the trash.

It’s unclear at this time if complete removal of all Office files is required. To completely remove, you can use the script,  Remove Office 2011 Uninstaller.pkg  to remove or see this Microsoft KB  to manually remove.  How to completely remove Office for Mac 2011

I used the method to install on an external. There was no previous version to delete. Another plus for using an external.

2) Install Office 2011 using a v14.0.0 or 14.1.0 installer. STOP at v14.1.0! Do NOT update further. Manually turn off “Check for updates” during this process.

3) Move the Microsoft User Data folder to the Desktop or rename to Microsoft User Data folder OLD. You might notice that it doesn’t have as many folders as before.

Service Pack 2 (SP2) 14.2.0 makes some major changes to file locations. Unfortunately, some of the files are not copied as expected. If you are a Lion/Mountain Lion user you will need to enable the User’s Library folder. Hold down the Option key and select Go in the Menu bar to view your User’s Library folder.

For details on what folders where moved see this link: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2012/04/service-pack-2-sp2-14-2-0-is-now-available-to-download/#new 

Go to Step 2

Option 2) Use an external drive

If you have an external drive with enough free space, I found this to be the easier & safer option. If you make a mistake using this option, you’ve only lost your time.

If you don’t have an external drive, I suggest the Seagate Backup Plus or Seagate GoFlex USB 3.0 drives:

• Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 $97.54
• Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 $127.43
• Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB USB 3.0 $139.99

If you have a newer Mac, you can upgrade the Seagate Backup Plus drives to Thunderbolt technology or FireWire 800 with the available additional adapter. Have an older Mac? The USB 3.0 uses the same USB 2.0 ports. You do get 2.0 speed unless you have a newer Mac with a USB 3.0 port. This drive is not Mac formatted. Is a bit less expensive than the ones marked for Mac use. Just use the Disk Utility or the handy software that comes with the drive to format for the Mac. If you buy through my link, the site will get credit to help us cover expenses.

1) Partition

2) Install OS X

3) Install Office 2011 v14.1.0

1)  How to: Make a partition using Disk Utility for recovery.

Using Disk Utility, select your external drive and add the largest partition available. I suggest a minimum of 300GB free.

• Open Disk Utility
• Select the disk where you want to create a new partition and click Partition
• Select an existing partition in the Volume Scheme list, and click Add (+). Disk Utility splits the partition into two, leaving the data from that partition in one of the new partitions. If the partition is less than half-full, Disk Utility creates two partitions of equal size. Otherwise, it creates one partition large enough for the data, and another partition with the remaining space.
• Resize the partitions as needed. You can drag the dividers between the partitions in the Volume Scheme list, or you can select a partition in the Volume Scheme list, and then enter a value in the Size field.
• If this drive has never been used, choose a format. Select a filesystem type (Mac OS Extended Journaled is default). The drive must be formatted as GUID Partition Table to be bootable.
• Click Apply.
• See Disk Utility Help for additional info.

When I made my recovery partition, I used my Seagate 2TB that holds my clone backups for old OS X installs. I added a partition by selecting the bottom partition, Virtual by clicking on the + sign.  If you no longer wish to keep this partition after recovering, you can remove and give the space back to the drive.

2)  Install  OS X (10.6, 10.7 or 10.8) and update. No need to update Safari etc.

3)  Install Office 2011. You will only update to 14.1.0!

When you see the option to automatically update or manually update, select manually! After activating you might want to disconnect from the Internet so you get no further update announcements.

• Install 14.0.0 or 14.1.0
  • Update to 14.1.0 if you used the 14.0.0 installer (download 14.1.0 updater)
  • Restart between each updater!
• Restart

4)  Drag your corrupt Identity to the Desktop on the external drive. You might want to make a duplicate. Otherwise if you need to start over, you can drag another copy from your internal drive.

If recently purchased Office, your installer will most likely be  Office 14.2.0, you’ll need to find a 14.0.0 or 14.1.0 installer or contact me to do the recovery for you.

 Step 2

Now that you have Office 2011 v14.1.0 installed on either your computer’s drive or an external drive, follow these steps.

1)  Open Word. This creates a new Microsoft User Data folder with a new blank Main Identity.

2) Quit Word

3) Open the Microsoft Database Utility by holding down the Option key when launching Outlook. You should not see your corrupt Identity. It should be on your desktop.

4) Delete the Main Identity. Click on the minus sign (-) to delete.

5) Now there are no Identities in the list. Click on the plus sign (+) to add a new Identity. It will automatically be named Identity 1.

6) Quit the Database Utility.

7) Navigate to your corrupt Identity.

1. Delete the database file.
2. Delete the Database Headers folder

In this example the Identity is named 4.16 Main Identity.

8) Next we need to navigate to the Microsoft User Data folder in Documents and copy (move) the Database Headers folder from Identity 1 to our corrupt Identity.

By copying a clean “Database Headers” folder that has database headers in version 14.1.0 we are tricking Office 14.1.0′s  Office Database Utility to thinking that your SP2 identity conforms to its own version and will then attempt to rebuild it.

9) Delete “Identity 1″ in the Microsoft User Data folder in Documents.

10) Move the corrupt Main Identity on the Desktop to the Office 2011 Identities folder in the Microsoft User Data folder.

11) Launch the Database Utility and select your Main Identity to rebuild. You should not be seeing any other Identities in the utility window.

 

12) Hopefully, you will receive a message saying that your database was rebuilt successfully. If not, see the links below for other workarounds.

13) Quit the Database Utility.

We’re getting close but a few more steps to go….

14) Open your Identity. Follow these steps:

1. Delete your IMAP and Exchange accounts. This deletes the cache files in Outlook. Your data is still on the server. You are left with only data that is “On My Computer”.
2. Under File > Export, select the default action to export all data as .olm file. Save Data File as Recovered OMC.olm on your Desktop.
   (Users that are using an external drive will need to drag this file to your internal drive for Step 3.)
   
   
   1. Note: Do you get “Done” at the end or do you get “one or more items failed to export”?
   2. If you do not get “Done”, this indicates corruption or you have folders that are over the 2GB limit. See Export as .olm file fails to get all data
3. Quit Outlook.
4. We are finished with Office v14.1.0.
5. Now we are ready to revert to Office v14.2.4 in Step 3.

Step 3

If you did Option 1 on your main drive…

• Zip the Microsoft Office 2011 v14.1.0 folder in Applications.
  • If for some reason you need to revert, you will not have to go through the install and update process again.
• Drag the Microsoft Office 2011 v14.1.0 folder to the trash.
• Unzip Microsoft Office 2011 v14.2.4 folder

If you did Option 2, on an external drive…

• Boot back into your main drive. Office is already updated to 14.2.4.

Let’s finish this process….

1) Open the Database Utility and create a new Identity. We will NOT be using any previous Identities.

2) Open the new Identity and import your Recovered OMC.olm file.

3) Move all data to their local folders using the instruction in How to move your data to a new Identity

4) Add  accounts.

• If you have POP account(s) you might get duplicates if you have preciously selected to ”leave on server”. Log into your account in your browser and move all the older messages to a folder you create in webmail. Outlook only downloads from the Inbox.
• Your Exchange and IMAP accounts will download all messages and folders to your new Identity.

Addendum

Error 255 for Identity Rebuild – I used this method to recover an Identity that gave Error 255 when trying to rebuild in 14.2.4 SP2.  This is not the same Error 255 that you get when Outlook opens then immediately closes. Error 255 only shows in Console log for this situation. The error 255 came up when trying to rebuild an older Identity (it was unclear what version created the Identity)

Error -18000 for Identity Rebuild – This error might be solved by simply having enough free disk space, but reverting to 14.1.0 to rebuild works when having enough free spaced failed.

MIME error - If you rebuild and then try uploading an email from ”On My Computer” to an IMAP folder and receive the MIME error, you can use the original Identity to rebuild in 14.1.0 as described here to rebuild without the error.

Thanks to Rob…

This process was discovered by Rob in the UK.  I had worked with Rob to recover his data. While we were able to rebuild  successfully, his Identity opened with 558 Recovered Folders. Determined to find a fix, thorough persistence and trials of different workarounds, he successfully was able to recover his folder names and has shared his steps with me so I could document and share with all users.

While creating this tutorial, I used another client’s identity with over 2,ooo Recovered folders with successful results. Another user that had a 14GB identity with 5000+ folders, followed the instructions on his external drive and was also successful.

Related links:

How to move your data to a new Identity

Troubleshoot Outlook

How to recover your data when rebuilding, restoring and upgrading fails

How to revert to Microsoft Office for Mac 14.1.4 after upgrading to SP2

Error: Your identity is older than this version of Outlook

Basics for a Successful Rebuild

Outlook crashes & hangs

Outlook cannot open the file because it is not associated with the default identity

Database