Where are Outlook Accounts stored?

[jsteph]

Hi,
In Outlook 2002 (not Express) I had a bizarre problem in which I (admittedly foolishly) double-clicked on a file on a CD with a ".prf" extension. This cd had nothing to do with outlook, I believe these were some sort of multimedia files, and I double-clicked hoping to get the Open With box so I could choose a player and examine them.

Anyway...Outlook opened and said something about making a new profile (.prf??) and I immediately cancelled, but when I reopened outlook ALL of my outlook stuff was gone--Contacts, mail, accounts--everything! Fortunately, I back up all of my Docs&Settings directorys, Windows subfolders, etc, and I was able to restore the Outlook.pst file...HOWEVER...it seems outlook stores Accounts somewhere else?? I looked in .FAV files and in the registry, but nothing. Did and Advanced search on all files in hardrives containing text <my emailname> but nothing showed. Where is this stored?
Thanks,
--jsteph

PS, I know recreating accounts isn't so much a hassle--except for remembering the darn mail.pop3.somedomain--or is it pop3.mail.somedomain--or is it...you get the picture.

 

[smah]

From the sound of things, you're fine - you have just created a new Outlook profile. You're information is there, where it's supposed to be - you just need to use the correct profile to access it.

Go to Control Panel, Mail, Show Profiles button. Remove the one that's not correct. If you're not sure which profile is the correct one, change the setting 'When starting Outlook prompt for a profile to be used'.

 

[jsteph]

smah,
Thanks--I am back up and running, but what I was hoping for was some file with the username/mailserver stored in it, so I wouldn't have to type all that in again. None of that showed up when I pointed to my backed up outlook.pst file.

It's not a big deal in this case, but there may be cases where I have a few dozen accounts in Outlook, and often it's hard to remember and manually type in the full mail.whatever.wherever.com string for each account.
--jsteph

 

[1blkish1]

Question along the same path . . . if I want to backup my sent and inbox to a cd, where would I go to &quot;copy&quot; ?

Thanks in advance,

Barry

 

[joegz]

Jsteph...the Outlook profile information is kept in the registry and not in a file

1blkish1...depends if your sent and inbox is on an Exchange server or on your PST file. If on a PST then go to the location of the PST and copy the file to you CD.

joegz
&quot;Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is.&quot;