Understanding Outlook Profiles & Account Settings
All critical Outlook information as it pertains to email accounts and data files is stored in an Outlook profile. Any number of Outlook profiles can be created but only one can be designated as the “default” profile to be used when Outlook is opened. If your environment is such where different configurations need to be used, you can set Outlook to ask which profile is to be used for the current session.
Each Outlook Profile has a set of Account Settings associated with it. Account settings for the current Outlook profile in use by Outlook can be accessed directly from within Outlook but you can not access different Outlook profiles from within the Outlook user-interface. That can only be done via the use of the Control Panel Mail app.
In most cases, new email accounts and data files can be added directly from within Outlook with one exception being the addition of a new (or additional) Microsoft Exchange email account which must be done via the Control Panel Mail app for any existing Outlook profile.
Another area that is cause for a lot of confusion is the process of “Starting Over” with Outlook either due a problem having been encountered or a mistake made during the initial process like mistakenly adding an Exchange account to the profile. Outlook profiles persist any uninstall and reinstall of Office (Outlook) so it is a completely needless, pointless and unnecessarily time-consuming process to go through an uninstall/reinstall purely to try and “start over” since Outlook will attempt the already defined profile the next time it’s used. The approach in “starting over” in these instances, is to use the Control Panel Mail app and create a new profile (not a copy of an existing one), configure the email accounts and make it the default fo be used the next time Outlook is opened.
With the introduction of Outlook ‘2013, it is now possible to have two active versions of Outlook on your system which is not something that could be previously done. If you install Outlook ‘2013, it will not delete the previous version but rather “co-exist”. What actually happens is that all the original Outlook profile information used by the previous version is copied to a different location within the system registry. In this scenario, the Control Panel will reflect two different Mail apps (one for the original Outlook version and one for Outlook ‘2013). If nothing gets changed, all the email and data file settings will be identical for both versions which also means that you won’t be able to use both versions at the same time since both would be trying to access the same data files.
With a dual install of Outlook, changes made to an Outlook profile related to ‘2013 do not migrate to the previous version. If, for instance. you uninstall and reinstall ‘2013, it will only use the existing profiles added or changed for ‘2013, nothing will be copied from the previous Outlook version. This is true both ways, if you uninstall and reinstall an earlier version of Outlook, it will not be aware of any ‘2013 related profile settings.
Accessing Account Settings via Outlook
Opening up Account Settings in O’2010 & O’2013 is virtually identical and is done by going to the menu bar
File –> Account Settings –> Opens up the Account Settings screen
In Outlook ‘2007 the steps are slightly different to get to the exact same place – click on Tools on the ‘2007 menu and select Account Settings
The Account Settings screen is identical regardless of how you arrived there or what version of Outlook is being used. Once you select the Account Settings option, you will be provided with a screen similar to the following
The primary three areas of interest to most people will be related to the <Email>, <Data Files> and <Address Books> tabs. More detailed coverage of these items can be found in <Understanding Outlook Migration – Part 1 – Settings>, <Understanding Outlook Migration – Part 2 – Data Files> and <Understanding the Outlook AddressBook>
Accessing the individual settings for a given email account is done by highlighting the desired email account followed by clicking on the <Change> button. The resulting setting screen will depend on what type of email account has been selected.
Control Panel Mail App
Accessing the Account Settings page for a specific profile is done via the Control Panel Mail app which can be accessed in one of two ways – via Category View or Small/Large Icon view. The following screenshots are based on either a Win7/Win8 system. Earlier Windows versions such as XP and Vista simply have a different sequence of steps to get to the same place.
Getting to where you want to go using the Control Panel Cetegory View is a 2 step process – first brings up the CP Category View at which point you need to click on “User Account & Family Safety” which brings up the second screen enabling you to select the Mail App
Using the Control Panel Icon view – you would select the applicable MAIL app directly
The above screenshots are from a system which has two versions of Outlook installed. The first MAIL app option shown as <Mail (32 bit)> will open the profile window for the previous version of Outlook and the <Mail (Microsoft Outlook 2013) (32-bit)> will be for the profiles related to Outlook ‘2013. You can’t mix the bit versions of Outlook in this scenario. They both have to be the same bit level. If only Outlook ‘2013 is installed on the system, you will only see the <Mail (32 bit) option.
Once you click on the Mail app – the Mail setup window appears with 2 shortcut buttons to the Account Settings page or option to select a profile other than what is currently defined as the default for Outlook.
Clicking on either the <Email Accounts> or <Data Files> will simply open up the Account Settings page shown above with the applicable tab getting the focus. The <Email> tab will show all the email accounts associated with the current profile whereas the <Data Files> tab will show all data files associated with the current profile. There is no requirement for a PST data file to be associated with any specific email account and OST files cannot be added on their own.
Clicking the <Show Profiles> button allows you either add a new profile, modify an existing one or change which existing profile is to be set as the default the next time Outlook is opened. Remember, in a system with 2 versions of Outlook, the profiles presented will be for the specific Outlook version.
Highlighting an existing Profile will open up the Account Settings page for that profile as shown above. There is no requirement to delete an existing profile and in most cases, it’s probably more prudent to create a new profile from scratch rather than adding/deleting accounts in an existing profile. Keeping yoru old profile gives you the option to always revert back to the original should that be required.
One other important point to remember, if the purpose for creating a new profile is because you are encountering some kind of issues with the existing profile, don’t make a copy of the original and then make changes to it since all that you are going to likely do is migrate the same issues to the new profile – start from scratch.
The following is an example of the Account Settings page which is the same in all versions of Outlook regardless of how you arrive at the page whether it’s from the Control Panel <Mail> app or from within any version of Outlook itself
Category: Understanding Outlook
