Outlook 2007 – Trying to delete data file that has no associated email account

microsoft-outlook

This is a very strange problem that I have not been able to resolve even after scouring the Internet for help. What happened was that I downloaded one of those auto-configure programs from my ISP to set up IMAP email access (FWIW it uses Gmail's servers). I double-clicked it and it did some stuff in the background. When I opened Outlook 2007 up, it asked me something like if I wanted to import some data to create an account for it. I clicked no at the time, because I decided I didn't want to do it then.

I don't quite remember the sequence of events after that, but the problem is that I have an entry in my Mail Folders called "imap.gmail.com (email address)." I manually set up the email account later successfully and it just has the email address, not imap.gmail.com with email address in parentheses. In any case, I can't delete this strange mail folder. It's strange because it is not in my list of email accounts in Account Settings. But it is a data file in the next tab over. When I try to remove it from the Data Files tab, it just says "This data file is associated with a mail account. To remove it use the 'E-mail' tab." But it's not in the E-Mail tab!!

How can I delete this? I tried doing some registry stuff but it was making Outlook really slow to boot, so I restored the registry. I tried redownloading the original auto-configure program and running it again, but–get this–when I downloaded it again, my anti-virus program thought it was a virus and didn't let me run it.

This is annoying because every now and then when I do Send/Receive I have to click Close like 5 times for some repetitive dialog boxes that tell me that the IMAP connection for that "account" was inactive.

Any help appreciated.

Best Answer

This can happen if there is a crash during the account setup process. The data file gets created first and then an email account doesn't get associated before the crash (or you force outlook to close etc.) happens.

You need to use the Registry Editor to fix this problem.

  1. Close Outlook.

  2. Open the Registry Editor to the following key:

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

    You will notice there are a bunch of entries with hex values for names, however two of them have sub values. One of them only has calendar summary (so not this one) and the other has a list of entries named "0000001", "0000002" etc.

  3. Click each one in turn - you will notice one of the values it contains is "Account Name". Double-click that value and you will see a readable text version of the entry on the right hand side of the pop-up.
  4. Find the one that has no text and delete it.
  5. Close the Registry Editor and restart Outlook.

If none of that made any sense to you, get help and don't try it by yourself...

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