I'm getting a message in New Outlook that says ""Delete copy of migrated data from Legacy Outlook to free up space."

Based on Sherry's input yesterday, I pulled the trigger on the "Delete old Outlook data" message, and now I don't see a thing in any of the folders in the "On My Computer" section of Outlook, contrary to what the Microsoft message promised...

After "migration" there is NOTHING in On My Computer...not even the email I had saved there before! Where did it go? How can I get it back? I have Time Machine backups.

Yes, this is a legitimate message from Outlook. When you migrate data from Legacy Outlook to New Outlook, a copy of the data is stored on your computer. The message you are seeing is a reminder to delete the copy of the migrated data to free up space on your computer. The migrated data is still available in New Outlook and can be accessed in the "On My Computer" folder.

Ok, but I am a little confused...where is the Copy of the Migrated Data that can be deleted?

Thanks in advance

Sandy

Hi,

This message concerns me greatly. I have thousands of messages in the "On My Computer" folder. Years of correspondence that I refer to from time to time. I already went through the process of restoring this data when it disappeared when switching to New Outlook. I can't risk having this archive removed by clicking on this message and having it remove all data stored in "On My Computer". Is there a way to get Outlook to stop prompting me to delete this data?

-Karl

Sherry Chen, since you gave the answer below on May 7, numerous people have asked meaningful follow-up questions, as well as noting they can't find ANY data, let alone migrated data in the "On My Computer" folder.

The notice we all received is not detailed enough to merit me hitting DELETE and just trusting I'll have all my data.

Please advise; thank you.

Dear LK Hill,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you. 

Yes, this is a legitimate message from Outlook. When you migrate data from Legacy Outlook to New Outlook, a copy of the data is stored on your computer. The message you are seeing is a reminder to delete the copy of the migrated data to free up space on your computer. The migrated data is still available in New Outlook and can be accessed in the "On My Computer" folder.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please let me know.

Thanks for your precious time. Have a nice day.  Sincerely,Sherry | Microsoft Community Moderator

Adding to this thread.

I was able to migrate all my "On My Computer" folders from Legacy Outlook to New Outlook. For several reasons, including a couple that others have mentioned on this thread, I regret having switched to New Outlook. So, please take the following a words of caution.

• I found the search capability in Legacy Outlook to be quite good and came to rely on it heavily. The search capability in New Outlook I find to be lacking as it simply does not find all emails matching the search criteria. I find myself doing much more detective work, trying to take the search results that I am given, narrow down the time window around a conversation and then scroll through emails from the same time period to find the exact email I am seeking.
• Scrolling through large email folders is 'klunky' in New Outlook. One must scroll downward to view the earliest UI-cached email and then continue to scroll downward to cause New Outlook to refresh older emails into the UI cache. I can understand why this was probably done, and it's not a showstopper. But the user experience is annoying. Something that I think should be fixed: if one tries to sort email from earliest to latest, New Outlook only shows the earliest email in its UI cache, not the actual earliest email in the folder.
• I was able to migrate my 'On My Computer' folder to New Outlook. The operation was a nail-biter, taking many hours to succeed and making me think that bad things were happening. But it did work. For reference, I have 12 years' worth of old email at a rate of about 100-300 emails per day. (Only about 15-20% of these emails to I read. The rest - mailing lists, support ticket threads, etc. - I archive for the purpose of searching for information if I need it. With Legacy Outlook, this approach to managing information conveyed in email worked great. With New Outlook, as noted above, it no longer works as well, but I find it manageable.)
• Unless I'm missing something, new Outlook still appears not allow one to create Rules that allow incoming email to be moved to 'On My Computer' folders. Rules only allow email to be moved to other online folders. Moreover, the new Rules interface seems to be klunkier than it was in Legacy Outlook. Whenever I want to add or update a Rule in New Outlook I find that the existing Rules UI loads very slowly. Moreover, I'm not convinced it applies properly the Rules I specify. I never had this concern with Legacy Outlook.
• Finally, I have tried repeatedly to "Delete copy of migrated data from Legacy Outlook." This process seems to run for several hours, eventually consuming all memory on my Mac (an MBA with 24GB) and crashing the system. In my most recent attempt, I quit all other applications, so nothing else would interfere. No luck. So for now, I just ignore the prompt. I'd love to know whether anyone has had success.

joe