Once I had a problem with my office computer, and IT admin had to do a complete re-installation. The most I was considered was about Outlook. I had a lot of email rules, server settings, etc. which takes a lot of time to configure. I had no worries about my mail because I already had located them to different drives, so even if the format the primary drive, I didnt had a problem. When I told this to my System guy, he gave a fantastic solution. It takes two seconds to instantly Backup and Restore Office Outlook settings.
Instantly Backup and Restore Office Outlook settings
The solution uses backup and restore of a set of registry keys. So you will need admin permission to complete this.
- Open Run prompt, type regedit, and hit the Enter Key. It will open the Registry editor.
- Navigate
- Earlier versions of Outlook: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles
- Office 365/Office 2019: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles\Outlook
- Under profiles, you would see the name as Outlook or the profile name which you had created for your mail in Outlook.
- Right-click on the profile name, which in my case was Outlook, and say click export.
- Make sure to save it in a location that is outside the computer. You can save on a network drive or send it over an email.
- Post-installation, and before running Outlook, first, run this file.
- Its a registry key. Windows will automatically merge it with the existing key as soon as you run it.
Now open Office Outlook. It will be prompt to choose the profile. If you had only one profile, make sure to set it as default, so you are not prompted every time you open Outlook.
That’s it. Now all I needed was to authenticate with an email account password, and everything was running smooth. Since my path to the PST or OST files remained the same.
You don’t need any software or any add-on for doing your backup. It’s a one-click solution for backup and restore of every configuration, mail rules, PST locations, etc. So next time you do a system format, use these steps to backup your Microsoft Office Outlook.
Thanks for sharing such a great tip! It will save me a lot of time since I format my computer every 4-6 months.
For restore there is a good tool restore outlook ,also tool perhaps can to do backup data too,it is free as how as I remember,software recover data from Microsoft Outlook pst files, program can be also used to recover information from Microsoft Exchange ost files and/or convert them into Microsoft Outlook pst files,restore mail messages, tasks, contacts, meetings, notes and logs in files with the .pst extension,recover Outlook files and data from corrupted pst files of all Microsoft Outlook mail clients, from Microsoft Outlook 97 to Microsoft Outlook 2003,save the recovered information as files with the *.pst extension, you should have the Microsoft Outlook 98 mail client or higher installed on your computer,runs under all Windows operating systems starting from Windows 98 (Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP).