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March

Backup email accounts in Microsoft Outlook 2003

How to backup email accounts in Microsoft Outlook 2003?

This question was bugging me like hell when I was taking backup of my outlook data today.

I took backup of all the folders, rules but I could not find any option to take backup of email accounts.

I googled for quite some time but could not find anything…
I knew there was a registry key for this but it wasn’t so easy to find….
after digging the net / google for more than 30 minutes, I finally found the way to do it…

Just locate the following key in registry (start – run – regedit):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

Then right click on the key, outlook and select option, Export…save it anywhere you want…
and run it while restoring your outlook.

This will restore your old outlook profile with all email accounts and rules.
But, you will have to enter passwords for the accounts again. It does not store the user passwords.

I hope this helps people like me..who are lazy to create the email accounts again… :D

Posted under Tips, Tutorials by

47 Responses


  • you think you are lazy i dont even create any accounts in Outlook i feel its better to look in the mail itself. hehe i am more lazier

    by: kato, Mar 7th at 6:08 am

  • deepu, text is getting cut in this post eg. digging ka spelling is diggi and even the 1st line….thght i’d tell u. DONT POST THIS!

    by: Shibani, Mar 8th at 9:44 am

  • I donno why its showing like that to u..spelling is also correct…i guess it time to switch to IE6 or latest version of FF :)

    by: Deep, Mar 8th at 10:02 am

  • im using IE 6 n y d hell didya post tht comment! Nikal usko!

    by: Shibani, Mar 8th at 3:08 pm

  • haha then windows 98 suck lol

    by: Deep, Mar 8th at 3:11 pm

  • Dammit! I’m using windows XP Professional. Its getting cut in IE 6 and FF 1.5 n stop posting this

    by: Shibani, Mar 9th at 11:24 am

  • How come windows xp? :P to be frank there is nothing wrong in the layout as far as i know. It doesnt cut anything here…so may be its some other issue which is causing it…

    by: Deep, Mar 9th at 11:51 am

  • Ahhh!! Deep at last you found out the way. Your struggle for 2 hours came to a successful end :D

    by: Ashish, Mar 9th at 3:06 pm

  • mailing u the screenshot, wiseman! its getting cut, still…

    by: Shibani, Mar 9th at 8:56 pm

  • Outlook 2003…..Whats that?
    I use Opera M2 :D
    Never worried bout any kind of Look….M2 Rocks!

    by: Ashis, Mar 10th at 12:38 pm

  • Ok, confusion in the posts…2 posts hve been mixed up!

    by: Shibani, Mar 11th at 10:03 am

  • Did any of this make sense to you freaks? What about using the export feature in outlook to backup emails? Or saving the .pst file, guess we need to google more

    by: maybei'mwrongidon'tknow, May 4th at 4:52 pm

  • kiddo, do you even know what is written in the post? do you know that you CANNOT export emil account settings, rules in outlook? Get your facts straight and then reply with your childish comments…

    ,pst file will take backup of the mail data not email accounts…

    by: Deep, May 4th at 10:28 pm

  • I want to take a email backup of my emails?
    How do I do this?

    by: Jackson, Jul 17th at 10:05 pm

  • use the import/export feature of outlook :P

    by: chr15b, Aug 7th at 7:53 pm

  • Apparently, there’s a feature in Microsoft Office 2003 to import/export settings like accounts.
    “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard” in the “Microsoft Office Tools”.
    This will save all the mail accounts as well as other settings in Office.
    But if you want to use this feature to transfer your settings and accounts to a new computer, I think it will do the trick.
    Unfortunately, I didn’t test it yet (will do soon).
    Hope it helps.

    by: Neerb, Sep 19th at 2:14 pm

  • Thnax this is very usefull info

    by: Dmitry, Oct 27th at 1:57 pm

  • Please add 1 and 1??? Anyway, thanks for postion this assistance. We’re swapping one computer to another and this worked very well. BTW Add the part that the final reg were about 17 lines down that contained the email accounts (what I was looking for) thanks!!

    by: Ben, Nov 7th at 12:00 am

  • Both the options – exporting / importing the registry key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook” and the “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizardâ€Â? in the “Microsoft Office Toolsâ€Â? exports the account settings but without the passwords. You will have to type them again

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    Email : saxon@vsnl.com

    by: Senthil Kumar, Dec 1st at 6:03 pm

  • This also works for Outlook 2007, thanks a lot :)

    by: FLSH, Feb 3rd at 7:02 pm

  • Hi,

    Thanks – This was just what I needed … Since XP and Office often craches and need a re-install!! (Bye bye weekend)… :) I found this JUST the thing i need to restore all my emails!!

    Thanks!!

    Peter

    by: Peter, Jun 30th at 5:49 pm

  • Hey,

    Googl’n has taken me to your site. I was looking for same solution for Outlook 2007.

    The registry file is the same but the path is different in Windows Vista.

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem

    Hope this helps someone..

    Chrs.

    by: Covani, Jul 20th at 8:05 pm

  • Do NOT use the Microsoft Office Tool to save Outlook 2003 Email Account settings from Office XP to move to Outlook 2003 on Vista. Somehow Microsoft screwed this one up big time. Now Outlook 2003 on my new Vista machine won’t start and displays an error message “Can’t find Outlook1.pst”. I did use a PST file to move over the email addresses and mail, but the names of both PST files was NOT Outlook1.pst. Wow can you imagine the richest business in the world can’t even figure out how move email address setting between on f’n version to another. Man Microsoft really, really sucks. But, that is why we have laws against monopolies. I just wish it would be imposed to break up this nightmare of a blood sucking corporation.

    by: Charles, Aug 11th at 11:17 am

  • I have no idea why they have removed the option to back up mail account settings in Outlook 2003 but it is a pain in the back side.
    Thanks for you tutorial.
    It did exactly what I wanted.

    by: Bob Ross, Sep 19th at 4:31 pm

  • Wow Thanks a lot for the info.!!

    by: Jet, Sep 21st at 8:09 am

  • Thanks! As a fellow lazy IT man, I was scratching my head at this one. I guess I could have searched the registry for one of the profiles, and that would have lead me there quicker………but why do that when google will do it for you!

    by: LJitMan, Oct 2nd at 11:33 pm

  • super duper…great stuff

    by: Mooch, Oct 5th at 5:18 am

  • Great job :)
    Thanks a loooot !!!

    by: Jet, Oct 5th at 11:44 pm

  • thanks, thanks and thanks

    by: huntedman, Oct 22nd at 5:44 pm

  • Thanks a lot, this is exactly what I was looking for.

    by: stufff, Oct 27th at 4:56 am

  • Thanks, a lot.
    There must be a way to store the passwords, too.

    I found something on the net.
    Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings
    (or something like this, I found it in Turkish)

    Now, we can backup and restore the settings…

    (I don’t try it, yet)

    by: birgin, Dec 29th at 6:33 pm

  • Very good..thanx

    by: Guptan, Feb 15th at 12:46 pm

  • Hi ,

    Ur hints is very useful for me …..Thanks A Lot

    Thanks once again
    Farhat Ullah

    by: Farhat Ullah, Apr 15th at 6:37 pm

  • Oh man!
    Thanks a lot!
    I hope it works when I reinstall windows! ;)
    You’re the best bro.

    by: Punez!, Jul 12th at 8:53 pm

  • A Good find

    Will this backup and save all the signatures to multiple accounts?

    Not something I’d rather try until needed

    Mark

    by: Mark, Sep 14th at 2:15 pm

  • Nopes, it won’t backup the signatures..

    by: Deep, Sep 14th at 2:37 pm

  • Brilliant! Thanks a million!

    by: Soulgirl, Sep 26th at 5:34 pm

  • THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
    Best answer and did exactly what I wanted. Reentering the passwords are no problems. But recreating the accounts when you have multiple accounts is a pain. Again, thanks so much.

    by: Long Bradley, Jan 10th at 5:56 pm

  • THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!

    by: sachin, Aug 23rd at 12:17 pm

  • Great Job, this is what I need to update my new computer, thanks

    by: Dennis, Sep 18th at 11:23 am

  • This is great, I’ve been looking for it myself for ages, but since it is in a strange key (WinNT) and the account info is encoded in HEX, I was out of luck.
    BTW when you uninstall Outlook, the information stays, so I just made a complete Office uninstall from 2010 Beta and then pulled in 2010 RTM and it still worked like a charm; the registry keys were preserved!! :)
    But it’s a good thing to keep the exported .reg for later use ;)
    Thanks again, really useful!

    by: Roobs Note, Oct 5th at 1:07 am

  • Thanxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    by: waleeed, Oct 26th at 2:36 pm

  • Smart Work

    by: Muthu, Aug 12th at 4:57 pm

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