Last night outlook 2011 (14.3.5, 52MB) prompted me to rebuild database, dutifully did so (without first duplicating) and seemed to work.

This morning the prompt reappeared and resulted in a 'database could not be rebuilt' message and error code 20997 (from memory). I am currently not able to open Outlook.

As suggested here I deleted Library preferences mentioning database utility and daemon, no joy.

I created a new identity and Outlook opened normally.

My email is IMAP so inbox and subfolders safe and sound on host website.

It seems i'm going to have to create & build a new identity and transfer my contacts, calendars and notes across, none of which I can afford to lose. My Time Machine hadn't been working properly for the around 3 weeks so not sure I can utilise but let me know otherwise.

Please advise on how to do this in a simple (for a non tech literate) and safe way that will not jeopardise contacts and calendar in particular.

And how to avoid it happening again.  

Thanks