By default, Olminator will convert all content of the .olm file and create the corresponding output formats. Attachments of emails and calendar appointments will be embedded into the converted output files, so that they can be re-imported into the respective target applications afterwards. Sometimes though you may want to only extract all the attachments of your emails or calendars to access or even archive them independently. Olminator supports this kind of extraction of attachments.
When Olminator introduced the Viewer tab allowing you to navigate the entire content of the selected .olm archive, it provided with a completely new and very convenient way to select subsets of items contained in your Microsoft Outlook for Mac export. Attachment extraction now make use of that fact:
To extract attachments, open the Viewer tab in Olminator's navigation bar and browse the folders of your archive displayed to the left. Select the folder (e.g. an entire account, or "Emails" or "Calendar" or any sub-folder thereof) that you want extract attachments from (btw, only email and calendar items all for extracting of embedded attachments). The "Start [extracting attachments]" button at the button bar on the bottom of Olminator's window will be enabled, once you have a folder selected. Press that button to start the extraction process.
Alternatively, you can right-click a folder from the folder tree and select "Extract attachments" from the popup-menu.
Olminator will extract all attachments of the items of the folder you selected plus all contained folders' items, except of those that have the little blue checkbox to the left of their name unchecked. This allows you to fine-tune which folders' items actually get processed. E.g. you may uncheck the "Calendar" folder so that when you afterwards pick your Account folder as root folder for the extraction, it will effectively extract all email attachments but leave the calendar attachments unextracted..
You can stop a lengthier extraction at any time by pressing the "Stop" button.
The progress of the attachment extraction will be accordingly reported with a progress wheel on screen. You can't navigate to other sections in Olminator while Olminator is busy with the current content – my apologies.
Once the extraction is finished – either by having all items' attachments extracted or by you having pressed the "Stop" button in between – the progress wheel will stay visible for a few seconds and then close automatically (you can also close it immediately by pressing the little chevron button in the Viewer's bottom action bar). Once it is closed, you can continue working with Olminator as before.
Please see the respective paragraphs in the documentation about configuration options, which can be found on the Configuring Olminator page. The most straightforward defaults have been chosen to guarantee a smooth extraction "out of the box". Feel free to experiment and tweak to your needs if required.
Caveat about duplicate attachments: Sometimes attachments with the same name (e.g. Image0001.png) may occur in independent emails or calendar appointments, as well as the same attachment file may actually appear in several related emails (e.g. when forwarded several times or if multipe copies of the same email are stored in your inbox structure). When extracting those duplicate (or presumably duplicate) attachments into one directory, Olminator will eliminate those redundant attachments if the following condition holds true: the filename is the same and the content of the suspected duplicates is exactly the same (byte-wise comparison). Olminator will then only store a single copy of the attachment.
