“Error Outlook cannot open the
file because it is not associated with the Default Identity” is an Outlook
2011 for Mac error related to the results listed in “Spotlight Search”. This
error message takes place when the user tries to access email items from “Spotlight
Search”.
The
error message occurs when “Spotlight Search” returns a particular result from
Outlook identity, which is not set as the default identity. It might have
started occurring subsequent to the attempt of creating or rebuilding the Outlook
identity.
There
are distinct resolution measures that can be implemented to rectify this issue.
Resolution
1-
Deleting Corresponding Outlook Identities:
This
issue can be resolved by deleting other Identities from Outlook account. It is
recommended to backup entire data as if any identity is deleted; all the
incorporated components or data contents of that particular identity will also
get deleted.
For
deleting additional identities from Outlook 2011 for Mac; following procedure
can be implemented:
- Close Mac Outlook application.
- Launch Outlook Database Utility by following this path:
“Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office/Microsoft
Database Utility”
- Select the desired identity that needs to be deleted
by clicking on it and then click on the (-)
sign button which is available in the bottom part of the window.
Resolution
2-
Exclude Additional Identities from Spotlight Search:
All
additional identities, except the main, can be excluded from Spotlight Indexing
by locating the path of the directory. The error might get resolved by following the
given procedure:
- Go to Apple menu and click on the “System Preferences”.
- Click on “Spotlight”.
- Select “Privacy”.
- Click on the (+) sign that is available at the bottom of the window.
- Locate the under-mentioned directory path:
“/Users/<username>/Documents/Microsoft
User Data/Office 2011 Identities/<Identity Name>”
- Select the particular directory that needs to be deleted and click on “Choose”.
Note: When a directory is being selected, the name of the particular identity gets listed in the “Privacy” segment. Hence, this directory is not indexed by “Spotlight” afterwards.
Since
either of the two solutions can be adopted to remove the “error Outlook cannot open the file
because it is not associated with the Default Identity”. But these methods must
be executed with proper understanding and technical knowledge as some sort of mistake
can lead to loss of data components and can cause corruption in Outlook Mac
files as well.
Resolution 3-
Third Party Solution:
The alternate solution to this
problem can be a conversion of Mac Outlook data to EML; as this file format used
to save a single message in Outlook 2011 for Mac. In addition, these files are
supported over multiple email applications in Mac as well as Windows Operating
System.
This can be done via utilizing a
third party tool, i.e. Outlook Mac
Exporter. Apart from EML, it also converts data to PST and MSG format and
maximizes the accessibility of data as then it can be viewed in Windows
Outlook. The only prerequisite to operate the tool is that the Mac data needs
to be converted to OLM and then this file has to be transferred to a Windows
machine via external storage device as this is a Windows-based tool and save Outlook 2011 messages into PST Outlook.
