Outlook 365 for Mac - Major HD space hog... what to do?

[cwo]

Hello everyone,

I'm using Outlook 365 for Mac for my work and shocked what a space hog it is for my Mac... I only have a 512 gb hard drive and still have to constantly watch it... I have over 385 gb consumed by "Other" in my HD. So trying to figure what to do here. Will uninstalling it from my Mac and switching to using 365 Outlook on the browser free up hard drive space? I'm not crazy about the web but I'll do it to save HD space.

It's just too bad the Mac version of Outlook doesn't have the HD space-saving features of the PC app.

I was seeing if there was other software I could try to access Outlook other than the MS apps?

Thank you for any solutions / feedback.

Cheers,
cwo

 

[hg.wells]

How much space do you think Office is taking up, it’s definitely going to be under 10gb - have you looked into the “Other” to see what it is using that space up?

 

[mj_]

What makes you think it's Office 365 that is hogging up your space? I've had Office 365 installed on all my Macs for years and all the applications combined, even including Teams, are still less than 10 GB.

 

[Boyd01]

Doesn't seem so big to me either, and you could just delete any of the apps you don't use.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Yes…the dots don't seem to connect in the original question.

 

[cwo]

Hi everyone,

Thank you and yes you are correct the apps themselves don't take up space but the data in the "Profile" is sucking up HD space - it's getting populated with all the attachments in emails being downloaded. So that portion is eating up room quite a bit. for the PC, they have built in features that help save on HD space - it's frustrating but I also read that Microsoft will be pushing to transition over to web-based email soon.

Thank you,
Colin

 

[johannnn]

https://www.omnigroup.com/more OmniDiskSweeper is a free tool by the amazing Omni developers (that make OmniFocus amongst other apps). In a minute or two you will see exactly which folder is taking up all the space.

Regarding Outlook on Mac, yes it doesn't have all the features (yet). I googled this question and a "Microsoft Agent" seems to have confirmed it (a year ago) https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...atically/fbaa67df-e0ac-4863-a6fe-dbc3e2145a14.

The built-in Mail.app lets you choose if attachments should be downloaded or not (Mail.app > Preferences > Account). It's possible to add an Outlook 365 account to Mail.app. However, it depends on what your company have decided. For example, I was able to do this a year ago, but now my company has doubled down on security with 2FA and all sorts of things, and now I'm unable to use Mail.app anymore.

"Will uninstalling it from my Mac and switching to using 365 Outlook on the browser free up hard drive space?"
Yes if you uninstall the app then you will get all space back. And the website (http://outlook.office.com) don't save attachments locally. However, first I'd try the OmniDiskSweeper app just to be 100% that it's actually Outlook.

Personally, I don't find the website (http://outlook.office.com) to be that bad. C'mon the Mac App don't even have a todo list or notes. It's crazy that clicking todo or notes in the bottom left just takes you to the website.

 

[HDFan]

OmniDiskSweeper is a free tool by the amazing Omni developers (that make OmniFocus amongst other apps). In a minute or two you will see exactly which folder is taking up all the space.

DaisyDisk is another good utility for freeing disk space.

 

[mj_]

Thank you and yes you are correct the apps themselves don't take up space but the data in the "Profile" is sucking up HD space - it's getting populated with all the attachments in emails being downloaded.

If that's the case then uninstalling Office (or Outlook) won't affect your free disk space at all since your profile will remian untouched. You would have to remove that bit manually as well.

Also, I don't know what account you use it with but for both Exchange and Outlook.com addresses I can select "Download headers only" which should reduce the amount of disk space required dramatically.