About the Office 2016 for Mac database

If a problem such as Outlook data corruption occurs, Office 2016 for Mac automatically repairs and rebuilds the Office database for you. This is a change from Office 2011 for Mac, in which you had to manually rebuild the Office database if there was a problem.

The ability to manually repair or rebuild a database is not available in Outlook 2016 for Mac. Because the reliability and stability of the Office 2016 database has been greatly improved, the likelihood of database problems is overall lower in Office 2016 than in Office 2011.

If small database issues occur, Outlook will perform a silent recovery in the background. If this happens, you will not be notified, and your work is unlikely to disturbed while the background recovery is occurring.

For larger database issues where a silent recovery is not possible and a database rebuild is necessary, Outlook will prompt you to repair the database to fix the problem. Steps for recovering the database will be provided, including restarting Outlook, rebuilding the database, and loading the rebuilt database.

If you experience problems or need help with the Office 2016 for Mac database, please visit the Office 2016 for Mac Microsoft Community or post a question.