I have a problem restoring my Outlook files after a time machine backup. My Main Identity can't be rebuild due to an unknown Outlook error. I have looked up numerous articles about this problem and it seems to be common on Mac OS X.

What I want to achieve is, that all my Emails, Account settings, calendar settings and contacts are as they were before the time machine backup. I have switched to MAC about a year ago and therefore have an old .pst file, which I migrated back then. (It didn't move all emails without notifying me, but I managed to move these manually as I still have the old Microsoft laptop)

Several MAC experts back then assured me that Outlook can be fully restored from the time machine as all other data and files on my mac. So far that seems to be true apart from my Outlook files. I have exported all settings and my Outlook content to an .olm file. But I only did that once, about 11 months ago. (Because the MAC gurus all explained that this manual backup is not necessary anymore with the time machine backup running all the time) So that doesn't help either as I am missing the mails & data from 11 months.

What happened so far:

After the time machine backup Outlook tried to rebuild my Main Identity but always fails to do so in Step 4 of 5 (recovering data). "Your database could not be rebuild" is the message I get from the MS Database Utility all the time.

I looked the problem up on several IT forums and support sides and...

...that's what I have done so far:

1. create a new identity: Worked fine, but Outlook is then completely empty. All mails, calendar entries, etc. are gone

2. I copied the identity files (about 4.7 GB) incl. the folder structure into the new identity, but this steps leads me back to step 1, as Outlook prompts to rebuild the database again and fails with the same error messages.

Tried this several times with recovered database folder and files from different dated backups.

My idea now is, to uninstall Outlook completely, re-install it and copy the files into the Main Identity again, as there should be no reference to older versions, which seems to be the problem. I haven't done that yet. I am not an expert and therefore hope to find a workable solution here on this platform.

Operating System: Mac OS X, 10.6.8

Office version 2011 for Mac: 14.2.2