Can you back up mail account settings in Outlook 2007?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kasey156
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Kasey156

I am on XPsp2 and Outlook 2007, and have two profiles with a total of 11
email accounts. Two of these are for non-profit organizations I help out.

I am caught in a situation where I need to "clean house" on this computer,
and for the life of me don't remember the passwords to at least half of the
accounts. In addition, some have fairly odd advanced settings, such as the
AOL and Yahoo accounts. I was trying to avoid manually copying down the
settings for each account on each profile, but the more research I do, the
more I am seeing that prior to doing any major system overhaul, I am going to
be forced to copy down all those settings and try to retrieve the passwords.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?
 
I have just found a program online that can, supposedly, recover lost Outlook
passwords. I downloaded it and the trial (free) version gave me the first
two letters of every password for every account on both profiles. I'm
impressed - that should be enough to jog my memory.

It saves them in a *.csv file along with the email address. Normally,
security would be an issue for me, but I will be doing a factory restore on
this 3 year old computer, and I can easily change the passwords on those
accounts after I restore everything.

I still don't like the fact that Microsoft doesn't seem to offer an easy way
to save and restore email account settings. There is no logical reason to
have removed that feature from the previous version that I can see, unless
they were worried about unauthorized users accessing someone's computer and
using that feature to steal their information. Regardless, it would be nice
to at least have a copy of the profiles and account settings, even without
the passwords, in some nice little file location with a name - something that
could be found and copied.

I'm still looking for feedback if anyone knows any techniques.
 
In the past one could export the account settings to OE, then in OE export
them to a file.
Reversing the process to recover the settings to OL
I dont know if that still works in OL2007 or even Windows Mail
 
Regardless, it would be nice
to at least have a copy of the profiles and account settings, even without
the passwords, in some nice little file location with a name - something
that
could be found and copied.
Click to expand...

Export the mail profiles from the registry. They're in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WIndows Messaging
Subsystem\Profiles
 
DL - 2007 version doesn't offer the export of anything but *.pst information
that I can find - i.e., contacts, etc. - but thank you for your input.

Brian Tillman - thank you for the registry key. Is there a knowledge base
article anywhere that describes this? If not, there darn well should be! I
will try this and pray that it works - update to follow factory restore.
BTW, I am noob enough that "pray that it works" is really an accurate phrase
- I've never tried to copy specific entries back into a registry.

I have other registry issues too - DRM music, games, etc. which does not
apply to this forum. Input on these issues accepted at (e-mail address removed).
 
You Import the accounts in OE

Kasey156 said:
DL - 2007 version doesn't offer the export of anything but *.pst
information
that I can find - i.e., contacts, etc. - but thank you for your input.

Brian Tillman - thank you for the registry key. Is there a knowledge base
article anywhere that describes this? If not, there darn well should be!
I
will try this and pray that it works - update to follow factory restore.
BTW, I am noob enough that "pray that it works" is really an accurate
phrase
- I've never tried to copy specific entries back into a registry.

I have other registry issues too - DRM music, games, etc. which does not
apply to this forum. Input on these issues accepted at
(e-mail address removed).
Click to expand...
 
I only want to know WHY Microsoft does not have any knowledge base articles
on exporting or backing up such vital information. (in re: email account
settings and the registry key)

I guess it would also be helpful to have specific instructions on how to put
the single registration entries back where they belong after resetting your
computer to factory settings, since that's what I'll be doing once I collect
all my information and instructions and get the data backed up. But I'm sure
I can fumble through it somehow. It just seems like if MS had these specific
instructions in their knowledge base, noobies like myself could perform these
functions without harrassing forumites.
 
Thank you very much! That sounds like a good one to try for the few that I
am missing!
 
Previous versions of Outlook never supported exporting mail profile
settings. Outlook Express did- but it is not the same program as Outlook.

You can export the registry key at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\WIndows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles but if you don't have
the other computer identical, down to the username and file paths along with
the very same addins installed, you will have errors.

See http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup2007.asp for files and locations.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]





EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)

You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.
 
Thank you for clarifying about the registry key paths etc. I actually
already found the link you gave regarding the location of other files in
another post - I don't remember how or where, but somewhere in the frantic
searching I've been doing last night and today, I ran across your link in
response to someone else's question.

I'm actually not moving to another computer - I'm restoring this computer to
its original factory settings, in order to determine whether an issue I have
is a corruption in Windows, or if there is a possible hardware failure.

However, the information is useful to me either way. I know nothing about
registries. I know how to back one up, but have never restored one for fear
of messing up and having to start completely over on my computer.

I have a backup program and an external hard drive but it doesn't do
registries or files that are in use - hence, there is a lot that doesn't get
copied. In addition, I despise having to do a complete backup of everything
when selective restores are so difficult, and, as you said about the registry
keys, the same issue occurs in the documents and settings files - if the
paths aren't exactly the same, a selective restore can cause more harm than
good. That's why I wish MS would provide a detailed knowledge base article
on these issues. ... but I guess they're trying to force us into that $49
per incident fee!

Thank you very much for your response!

Diane Poremsky said:
Previous versions of Outlook never supported exporting mail profile
settings. Outlook Express did- but it is not the same program as Outlook.

You can export the registry key at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\WIndows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles but if you don't have
the other computer identical, down to the username and file paths along with
the very same addins installed, you will have errors.

See http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup2007.asp for files and locations.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]





EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)

You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.


Kasey156 said:
I have just found a program online that can, supposedly, recover lost
Outlook
passwords. I downloaded it and the trial (free) version gave me the first
two letters of every password for every account on both profiles. I'm
impressed - that should be enough to jog my memory.

It saves them in a *.csv file along with the email address. Normally,
security would be an issue for me, but I will be doing a factory restore
on
this 3 year old computer, and I can easily change the passwords on those
accounts after I restore everything.

I still don't like the fact that Microsoft doesn't seem to offer an easy
way
to save and restore email account settings. There is no logical reason to
have removed that feature from the previous version that I can see, unless
they were worried about unauthorized users accessing someone's computer
and
using that feature to steal their information. Regardless, it would be
nice
to at least have a copy of the profiles and account settings, even without
the passwords, in some nice little file location with a name - something
that
could be found and copied.

I'm still looking for feedback if anyone knows any techniques.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Diane Poremsky said:
Previous versions of Outlook never supported exporting mail profile
settings.
Click to expand...

Office 2003 had the "save my settings" wizard which included all the Outlook
profile settings.......AFAIR....
 
It didn't include the pst and, like exporting, it included every thing in
the profile and only worked correctly on an identical system. The OE system
of exporting the account settings is much better.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]





EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)

You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.
 
It didn't include the pst and, like exporting, it included every thing in
the profile and only worked correctly on an identical system.
Click to expand...

True, but you could edit the control file and have it copy the PST (or any
other files) you chose.
 
Happily, I have reformatted and my Outlook is up and running. I don't know
if I did everything correctly on both profiles - but the primary one, mine,
had the mail account settings correctly added with the use of the registry
key, and with the help of the password recovery program, I was able to enter
and save the passwords.

Time will tell if I need to do more adjustments using the information I have
saved at your suggestions. In the meantime, I'm sending and receiving on all
the primaries.

Outlook is the only true responsibility I have to others regarding my
computer use, so it makes me extremely grateful to everyone who has
contributed input regarding this issue - I was petrified that I wouldn't have
passwords for the critical accounts, or that I would spend hours trying to
set up all the email addresses.

Now the only one put out by the reformat hassle is me - I have to reinstall
my games! *smile*

Again, thank you all!
 
The Save my Setting Wizard was amazing! I WISH that they could release an
add-on to Office 2007 that would do this. It's a pain to back up for a
rebuild.
 
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