can't delete duplicate account under Outlook 2007 (Win 7)

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sybernut

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Hello. I am new to this forum, have rapidly searched for similar topics without success, forgive me if this has already been asked/resolved.

Due to an unwanted self-install of an unrelated program, I had to bring the computer back to a much older System Image (after saving the current System Image, all under Windows 7). I backed up my current user files using Windows Backup (all files under C:\Users, including *.pst files from a working Outlook 2007) prior to this and restored them on the older System Image: this worked OK except that my previous Outlook was not properly restored (personal folders missing, etc.), so I went back and forth between these two System Images trying various backup/restore utilities, including Acronis, BackRex (Outlook backup utility, free evaluation version) etc. until it seemed Outlook was properly restored (I use only the single default Outlook 2007 profile).

At this point I noticed that I had a duplicate of one of my IMAP accounts (let's call it x@y.com) in the Outlook Mail Folders panel. The duplicate is called x@y.com(1), and it appears in the Tools > Account Settings > E-mail dialog (can be modified/deleted), but the original x@y.com no longer does (both do appear in the Mail Folders panel), so I can't delete it (I don't want to use an account which I can't modify/delete). Also, there are now two *.pst files associated with the x@y.com account, along with one for the x@y.com(1) account.

I suspect that the suffixes of the *.pst files associated with x@y.com may have been different in the old and current System Images and in the (learning) process of restoring Outlook, both files may have ended up in the ...\Microsoft\Outlook directory; and I may have created the x@y.com(1) account in my attempts to resolve the problem.

I retried jumping back and forth between System Images (am now trying to restore only the older-image Outlook configuration to the most recent and otherwise healthy System Image) , rerunning BackRex and even manually backing-up/restoring using ONLY the information found here (includes registry Outlook-profile save/restore)

http://www.jephens.com/2008/10/14/importing-and-exporting-mail-and-user-accounts-in-outlook-2007/

making sure each time there were no files in the ...\Microsoft\Outlook directory prior to restore.

Still, this problem remains: the x@y.com account cannot be deleted (it does not appear in the Tools > Account Settings > E-mail dialog); and Outlook seems to remember that it exists (e.g. Outlook recreates duplicate *.pst files for x@y.com) in spite of wiping the ...\Microsoft\Outlook directory prior to restore and in spite of (presumably) restoring the registry Outlook-profile. It's as if there are other files/registry-entries that are storing this information. Perhaps someone here knows the solution.

If I can't solve this any other way, I could restore the old System Image and restore my curent User files except for the ...\Microsoft\Outlook directory... would this work? This is somewhat inconvenient as I must reinstall many programs which have been installed in the meantime. Thanks in advance for any and all help.
 
PS am also trying to preserve as many Outlook folders as possible. This has resulted in trying to restore Outlook from various intermediate System Images which still had a healthy Outlook, all without success.
 
Did you make a new profile? That might fix it. Maybe in combination with renaming the Microsoft\outlook folder where the pst file is. You can get the old pst file out of the renamed folder so you won't lose anything.

I half suspect the problem is "bleed" from the imap account, although if so, yours is the worst example I've ever seen since you using images.

My scenario: I have an profile with an imap account. I make a second profile and don't add the imap account. But the imap pst file associated with the account in the first profile magically appears in the folder list anyway.
 
Thank you for your response, Diane... if I create a new profile (and presumably readd all my accounts), will I lose the (many) personal folders where I archive my emails (under my current default profile)? If so, can I export them from the old profile into the new (will this preserve my archived emails?)? If I can't export/import them across profiles, can I at least export/import back into a new default profile from the old System Image? Thanks...
 
It seems my Outlook (2007) wants all *.pst files for all profiles in the standard ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory, which it seems to create if it doesn't exist... I had to

(0) rename old ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory

(1) recreate a blank ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory

(2) add a new profile via the Control Panel Mail service (which creates an empty? Outlook.pst file)

(3) copy the old Outlook.pst (from a copy of the original ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory) to the ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory

(4) recreate all of my IMAP accounts in the new profile (did this via Outlook but could perhaps be done via the Control Panel Mail service

As you mentioned, copying the old Outlook.pst preserves all my mail-archive directories, but unfortunately recreating the IMAP accounts means I have to recreate all the Outlook Rules as well. Also, I am left with a bunch of garbage IMAP *.pst and other files from the default 'Outlook' profile in the ..\Microsoft\Outlook directory which I don't need... can I can get rid of those? Outlook seems to recreate them whenever I restart it, this is likely because the info is in the registry somewhere; could it be there are other registry entries besides the profile ones mentioned in

http://www.jephens.com/2008/10/14/im...-outlook-2007/

? I was sure I restored those from an earlier image, but to no avail (could have been a mistake on my part, or a BackRex bug/demo backup feature :-)

Anyway, am pissed at Usoft because all these troubles started due to an unwanted MSN messenger auto-install which I didn't know how to remove; followed by various backup-software exercises, each program seemingly with its faults/peculiarities causing my attempts to fail... do you know of an Outlook backup utility which *completely* backs-up/restores *all* user accounts under Win7?

Thanks for your help.
 
PS I SCANPST'd all my original *.pst files... there were errors in every one of them (wtf?), which were presumably 'fixed' but it didn't help with this problem, which I am convinced is a 'buried registry entry' problem...
 
You can delete the old imap pst files. If you want to move the pst files, see move imap pst file for instructions. (the reg key won't work for outloko 2007 imap)

The profile is stored in the registry but outlook shouldn't be regenerating pst files, except for the imap account you are using. if its if its adding imap pst files for accounts not in your profile, you need to make a new profile.

scanpst will almost always find errors - that is no big deal.

Rules: they should be stored in the default pst file. Go to Tools, Rules wizard. Are they listed? oh, i bet they won't show because they are tied to an account that isn't in the profile. Should have exported them before messages with the restores. (Options button in the rules wiz dialog.) You could try opening the old imap pst files (imap pst files will open in outlook, you just can make them be the imap pst again) and see if they are listed - if so, export!
 
As an FYI, you need to be real careful using the reg entries under windows messaging subsystem. Reusing them often results in corrupt profiles - it's really better to make fresh profile. The only time it's ok to use the reg is when the username and GUID is identical - system restore or images would be the only way to meet both conditions, so it should have worked for you.




We have backup tools listed at outlook 2007 backup and dual boot - I don't know that one is any better than the other - but they are all better than Windows Easy Transfer.
 
Thank you for your help, Diane. Actually, the sol'n to my problem was simply to delete the Outlook default profile, exit Outlook, backup the non-IMAP Outlook.pst, empty the ...\Microsoft\Outlook directory, create a new Outlook default profile, exit Outlook, copy over then new Outlook.pst with the backed-up one and recreate my email accounts; I should have backed up my rules first like you said, but that's not such a big deal (anyway, some rules were suspicious and needed cleaning :-)

Should I run SCANPST regularly?

Another interesting problem came up on only ONE of my 5 or 6 IMAP accounts: an attachment sent from any of my IMAP accounts (including itself) and received by that account as viewed in the browser version of the account (not in Outlook) showed up as the dreaded winmail.dat file; this was true for only ONE of my accounts... and I could only solve it by changing Tools > Options > Mail Format > Message format from HTML to Plain Text (according to articles on the net, HTML should work just as well as Plain Text to suppress winmail.dat). The Tools > Options > Mail Format > Message format > Internet Format remains at its default HTML setting. Go figure!

Thanks again.
 
I would not run scanpst unless outlook told you to or you had reason to suspect it needed it - its always going to find problems (which freaks some people out) and if Outlook detects inconsistancies, it will run scanpst on startup.

The winmail.dat issue is weird- the setting should apply to all mail, not just mail sent to yourself. You might want to verify you don't have your own contacts configured to always use RTF (assuming you have a contact for each of the accounts.)

Also, if the address is in your autocomplete cache, did it when it comes up and see if it works as expected (using HTML) - the autocomplete cache remembers RTF settings, so if you ever forced RTF to the address, it will use it.
 
Thank you, Diane... OK, so after doing all this, I am left with a single profile named Outlook (the name of the default profile, but I (re)created it I think)... now, when I start up Outlook it asks me each time what profile I want to choose, even though there's only one... and setting it as the default profile does not prevent this from recurring... any ideas? Thanks in advance.
 
Hi... no I don't use any such 3rd party or sync tools...

I must say that Outlook is the buggiest of all the members of the MS Office suite...

Thanks for the link but that problem now seems OK...
 
Hi Diane... actually, I was wrong... there is an add-in: Avast Outlook add-in... presumably for scanning viruses. Could this be the problem? Is there a workaround other than removing the add-on (not sure how to do that)? Please note that I did not have this problem prior to recreating the (default) Outlook profile.

Since I am on this topic, the add-in requests that I disable SSL so that Avast can scan email for viruses... it claims that it implements (encodes/decodes?) SSL on its own (presumably after/before receiving/sending the email). There's a rub though, because to my understanding, SLL uses a dedicated TCP port, and non-SSL uses another; and it seems that I can't force Outlook to use a non-dedicated port (i.e. a non-SSL port with SSL enabled, and vice versa)... this makes sense, since presumably this applies server-side as well (i.e. perhaps an SSL message on a non-SSL port will not be recognized?). This is confusing to me...

Have a nice day,

Vlad
 
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