Outlook Desktop App - Moving an account and all settings associated with same

[britechguy]

One of the members on the M365 Accessibility group (it covers standalone Office, too) has a computer that's already set up with Outlook 2021 and is now setting up 2 new Windows 11 machines with the same version of Office. He asked the following: "Is it possible to transfer an email account and it's settings from another computer running the same version over to these 2 new computers? If it's possible, what are the steps for doing this please?"

Moving or re-creating an existing email account is simple, but it's the "and its settings" part that I'm not sure about.

I can deal with converting any step-by-step instructions in "point and click" parlance to keyboard shortcuts, but I'm asking here because I imagine the process is pretty straightforward and someone might be able to lay out the steps in a few moments. There's just too much stuff floating around the web about this, much of it out of date, so I thought I'd ask.

 

[Sky-Knight]

There really isn't, Outlook is designed to be aimed at an Exchange mailbox that has all those settings in it and it sets itself up when you login.

So if there's a way to move Outlook Profiles around reliably... I've never seen it. FABs is as reliable as any, but even that's questionable most of the time from what I've seen. And nothing lets you cross versions well.

 

[britechguy]

I've already asked for clarification regarding whether the source machine is using Outlook 2021, too.

I didn't ask whether Exchange is the access protocol, but I doubt it.

 

[fincoder]

Fabs works quite well transferring Outlook data files and settings.

 

[britechguy]

Fabs works quite well transferring Outlook data files and settings.

Yes, but it's not accessible for screen reader users and this is not a job I'd be doing myself.

 

[callthatgirl]

My answer: No

 

[callthatgirl]

And this is a benefit for you, you will need to do all the fun things for them and bill them if they want your help.

 

[HCHTech]

The more customization there is on the Outlook install (changed font and font sizes is the common ones I see), the more users want you to do this. If I had to do it, I'd be looking for the registry key that holds the information and just doing an export / import.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\MailSettings

is one possibility. As long as you backup the existing key first, you can always restore it if something goes south. You could probably export the entire set of keys under "Office" to be sure you got everything...

 

[britechguy]

I honestly doubt there are many customizations to Outlook proper at all.

Given the input here as well as on the M365 Accessbility Group, the consensus is just to re-create the accounts on both other new machines and be done with it. If something about Outlook needs to be tweaked on the new boxes, it'll be done by hand.

This is one of the reasons I will not set up any email account with POP access at all anymore. With IMAP or Exchange, re-creating the account on any given device just has the email (and sometimes only the email) "automagically" reappear in its entirety. This person was using IMAP access to a Charter.net address and had never used any 3rd party contacts or calendar sync tool.