RE: mail retention in outlook for mac

Hi Cyril,

No, the Outlook for Mac 2016 (15.8) doesn’t have this setting. You can choose to use Online mode but cannot specify how many emails will be downloaded. Thanks for your understanding.

I notice that your original concern is that the mailbox size is large while the local storage is small. A workaround of this situation is that you can choose to only download mail headers. Here are the steps:

1. Click Outlook on the button bar.
2. Navigate to Preferences> accounts and then go to the advanced settings.
3. Turn on “Download headers only”.

Then only mail headers will be downloaded to the hard drive. The full contents will be downloaded when you open the messages to read them. 

Best Regards,
Henry Huang