Windows 8 and Outlook 2010

Question

In the past days my Outlook 2010 stopped working.

I was moving some emails (IMAP account) to an Archive, just to free some space from the server. Outlook crashed and when I tried to restart it wont let me. Outlook will only show the message: "loading profile" but would go through. So I figured the .PST file must be corrupted.

So I tried to repair it but I couldn't so I gave up. after many attempts I decided to erase everything: email profiles, pst files, etc, etc. but when I try to set again my IMAP email account it won't let me. It will tell me the profile name already exists, but it doesn't. The only thing that is remaining from the old account is the name of the "Data File". I already deleted the file, but the name still shows in the Windows Email settings because it was set as the default account.

I don't know how to delete it, or how to start over setting my IMAP account. Everything I need is in my Gmail server. (I don't need old emails; they are already gone.)

Answer 1

Were the steps you took to delete the mail profile the same as those recommended by Microsoft at Remove a profile?

A profile consists of accounts, data files, and settings that specify where your email messages are saved.

1. Exit Outlook.

2. In Control Panel, click or double-click Mail.

Where is Mail in Control Panel?

Mail appears in different Control Panel locations depending on the version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, Control Panel view selected, and whether a 32- or 64-bit operating system or version of Outlook 2010 is installed.

The easiest way to locate Mail is to open Control Panel in Windows, and then in the Search box at the top of window, type Mail. In Control Panel for Windows XP, type Mail in the Address box.

NOTE The Mail icon appears after Outlook starts for the first time.

The title bar of the Mail Setup dialog box contains the name of the current profile. To select a different existing profile, click Show Profiles, select the profile name, and then click Properties.

3. Click Show Profiles.

4. Select a profile.

5. Click Remove.

NOTE Removing an email profile doesn’t remove your Outlook Data Files (.pst), so no data is lost.

If they were, you could try manually deleting the profile information from the Windows Registry by running the regedit command while logged into Windows under the affected account and navigating to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles and deleting any profile information you find there. That's where Outlook 2003 and 2010 store profile information in the registry. I'd suggest once you've navigated to that spot in the registry that you choose "file" and then "export" in regedit to create a backup of that area of the registry first just in case there might be something in the profile information in the registry that you later find you need to restore. Don't have Outlook open when you are editing that area of the registry.

If you've saved a backup copy of your PST file, if you get Outlook working again, you should be able to import the information from that PST file into Outlook again.