Outlook 2007: Export Account Settings

[ChrisInNewYork]

I use and love Outlook. However, I may be what is considered a "power user",
and I own my own mail server and domain. Lets call the domain "mydomain.com".

I dislike spam. Because I own my own domain and mail server, I generate a
unique, random email address for each specific use. Every web site, every
bank account, every contact I have generated a unique email address on my
server. I only use each address for one specific purpose. That way if I
ever get spam, I know which entity leaked my email address, and I only have
to change one address/web site account instead of all of them.

Over time, I have accumulated about 150 email accounts, each serving a
unique purpose. Outlook 2007, with a single PST file, is configured to pull
from all 150 email accounts on my local email server.

I need a way to export my account settings in case I ever need to reinstall.
I've read in other threads this is not available, and this seems quite
unfortunate for an otherwise very good program. Regenerating passwords for
150 mail accounts should I happen to lose my Outlook account settings is not
acceptable. Re entering 150 mail accounts into outlook account settings is
not acceptable. Saying that I'm unique and most people don't do this, well,
that may be true, but that isn't acceptable either. There NEEDS to be a way
to export the Outlook 2007 account settings. So please, Microsoft, get to
work on it. Thanks.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Why are you creating separate accounts and not simply add an alias to a
single mailbox?
The end result would be that you would have only 1 account to configure and
Outlook would be running much smoother.

Anyway, to fully backup all your account settings, I would recommend using a
3rd party backup application such as ABF Outlook Backup. I've tested this
application and it worked even when going cross Outlook versions and cross
Windows versions. That means that it was for instance no problem to backup a
configuration of Outlook 2003 on Windows XP and restore it to a computer
running Windows Vista or Windows 7 with Outlook 2007.

For more information about this add-in see;
http://addins.howto-outlook.com/abf_outlookbackup
If you decide to order, use ABF-1HTJ8 to get a discount.

For other backup solutions see;
http://www.howto-outlook.com/tag/backup

 

[ChrisInNewYork]

Why are you creating separate accounts and not simply add an alias to a
single mailbox?

Because many of the mail accounts I have involve two way communications. I
have to send out responses or initiate emails from the address in question.
If used an alias, the responses would come from the alias address, revealing
that address to the external party, which is precisely what I do not want to
do. The only address web site X ever sees is the one unique specific address
I generated for them. They never see anything else. Therefore it's easy to
get rid of if I ever get spam on it - and it's secure in that it can't be
used for any of my other accounts because they have their own unique random
email addresses (12-20 random alphanumeric (e-mail address removed))

Anyway, to fully backup all your account settings, I would recommend using a
3rd party backup application such as ABF Outlook Backup. I've tested this
application and it worked even when going cross Outlook versions and cross
Windows versions. That means that it was for instance no problem to backup a
configuration of Outlook 2003 on Windows XP and restore it to a computer
running Windows Vista or Windows 7 with Outlook 2007.

For more information about this add-in see;
http://addins.howto-outlook.com/abf_outlookbackup
If you decide to order, use ABF-1HTJ8 to get a discount.

Given no other options, I will probably buy this commercial product.

But that does not mitigate the fact that Microsoft is pretty negligent in
not allowing an export of this data to a file. Make it an encrypted, MSFT
only file. Or put it in the pst. Don't stick it in some obscure registry
key and call it "security" because it's obscure. That's just inane.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm still quite unhappy that Microsoft makes
Outlook so good in some ways and so bad in others.

 

[Leonid S. Knyshov // SBS Expert]

Given no other options, I will probably buy this commercial product.

But that does not mitigate the fact that Microsoft is pretty negligent in
not allowing an export of this data to a file. Make it an encrypted, MSFT
only file. Or put it in the pst. Don't stick it in some obscure registry
key and call it "security" because it's obscure. That's just inane.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm still quite unhappy that Microsoft makes
Outlook so good in some ways and so bad in others.

All that stuff is in fact actually in an obscure registry key.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles]

Whatever you do, at least back it up.
from command prompt, type
reg export hkcu "%userprofile%\hkcu.reg"
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Crashproof Solutions
510-282-1008
Twitter: @wiseleo
http://crashproofsolutions.com
Microsoft Small Business Specialist
Try Exchange Online http://bit.ly/free-exchange-trial
Please vote "helpful" if I helped you

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Only backing up that registry is completely useless. It is also quite
useless to do that when wanting to migrate your settings to another machine
because of file and path dependencies.
See http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/filesandsettings.htm



-----

"Leonid S. Knyshov // SBS Expert"

Given no other options, I will probably buy this commercial product.

But that does not mitigate the fact that Microsoft is pretty negligent in
not allowing an export of this data to a file. Make it an encrypted,
MSFT
only file. Or put it in the pst. Don't stick it in some obscure
registry
key and call it "security" because it's obscure. That's just inane.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm still quite unhappy that Microsoft
makes
Outlook so good in some ways and so bad in others.

All that stuff is in fact actually in an obscure registry key.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles]

Whatever you do, at least back it up.
from command prompt, type
reg export hkcu "%userprofile%\hkcu.reg"
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Crashproof Solutions
510-282-1008
Twitter: @wiseleo
http://crashproofsolutions.com
Microsoft Small Business Specialist
Try Exchange Online http://bit.ly/free-exchange-trial
Please vote "helpful" if I helped you