IMAP - backup and restore everything from OUTLOOK on W10 to clean W11 build

Hi folks
If you have IMAP with recent versions of OUTLOOK including OUTLOOK 2016/2019/2021 or Outlook/365 a really simple way of copying all your email, account details etc etc is as follows :

Just create a .reg file on W10 of your outlook stuff and insert it back into the registry in W11 . All accounts, emails etc restored without fuss -- you'll have to re-insert passwords first time though on each account.

Export this as a .reg file and then re-import it back again.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles

For Account signatures if you use those --(I don't myself though)

search for
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures ad save all files / folders and then restore on new computer

For Outlook 2010 something similar - the number won't be 16 though - probably 14 or something -- I'm sure somebody with OUTLOOK 2010 can check. In the case of Outlook 2010 you'll probably need a .pst file too.

To ensure sync works properly after restore go down each of the account names, right mouse click, choose IMAP folders and uncheck the "only show subscribed folders" --if you don't do that you won't see any mail going to junk / spam folders --Good thing you might say - but when your mail box gets full and you can't delete these - then !!!!!!!!

BTW when you first start outlook and get prompted for a profile just use default one unless you copied a zillion profiles from old system. Then set as default, close outlook again - it won't close or give any messages, re-start and you are back in business.

Cheers
jimbo

Cheers
jimbo

I always hated Outlook for the lack of backup and restore of accounts, it's not really that much of an issue these days as you only need to enter your email address and password and it does everything for you.

z3r010 said:

I always hated Outlook for the lack of backup and restore of accounts, it's not really that much of an issue these days as you only need to enter your email address and password and it does everything for you.

Click to expand...

Hi there
Maybe for simple single accounts but :

If you have multiple accounts with different mail servers etc -- it doesn't -- e.g one might have email addresses from 3 or 4 different work clients on exchange servers etc !! with a slew of different passwords both on inbound and outbound mail servers.

Cheers
jimbo

I'm down to 6 accounts but that's all I needed to do last time I tried (I've moved to eM Client these days).

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks
If you have IMAP with recent versions of OUTLOOK including OUTLOOK 2016/2019/2021 or Outlook/365 a really simple way of copying all your email, account details etc etc is as follows :

.....

Click to expand...

On a side note....

As a college student I have access to my school's Office 365 suite, allowing me to install on my PC. Growing weary of having the school control aspects of my PC (have to agree to this), I decided to drop the school's suite and purchase my own copy of Office 365.

So, I remove the school's suite via control panel, reboot, and install my purchased copy; oddly the activation reverts back to the school's suite (Office 365 Enterprise). Long story short I have to resort to Microsoft's "Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365" which does a deep dive in removing all remnants of Office.

Once the app finishes removing Office, you're offered the chance to install a fresh copy of Office 365 from your Microsoft Account (subscriptions are tied to your Microsoft account). I install my personal suite, go to open Outlook to create my email accounts, but lo and behold, all the accounts are still there - Fully functional with no log in requirements! This is a complete surprise to me but one I welcomed.

First time I've ever seen this where my email accounts were retained with a fresh install of Office! That even doing a clean install of Windows 11, and installing the Office suit, I had to setup my email accounts in Outlook. And, yes, my email accounts use IMAP.

Seems the Support and Recovery Assistant tool has the ability to retain email account info for Outlook. At least that's my guess.

MailsDaddy IMAP backup tool is an easy-to-use solution for backup the IMAP database. Using this, you can backup IMAP email in PST, MBOX, MSG, EML, and other formats. It can backup emails and attachments from multiple IMAP accounts. This application is compatible with all the outlook versions like 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, and earlier versions.

sachin singh said:

MailsDaddy IMAP backup tool is an easy-to-use solution for backup the IMAP database. Using this, you can backup IMAP email in PST, MBOX, MSG, EML, and other formats. It can backup emails and attachments from multiple IMAP accounts. This application is compatible with all the outlook versions like 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, and earlier versions.

Click to expand...

It's not so much a problem of backing up individual emails -- but there's loads of things like address books, contacts etc . If it's just IMAP then stuff is maintained on the server but migrating from 2010 etc you need to extract stuff from the .pst files too even if having used imap.

Converting from POP3 to IMAP is another hassle too.

Anyway these days it isn't so much of an issue if you stick to IMAP.

Cheers
jimbo