How to recreate Outlook profiles (video tutorial)

Recreating an Outlook profile is a quick fix in many situations. In the video below I show how to recreate Outlook profiles for a single user and for an entire company. But first, what is an Outlook profile?

Outlook profile contains all the information about your Outlook configuration. You might be using Outlook for years without knowing of the profile existence, but it is how Outlook knows how to connect to your mailbox. The best part of Outlook profiles is that resetting them is an easy and quick method of fixing some common problems with the email client. The video tutorial below shows the easiest method to create a new Outlook profile.

Transcription

In this short video I will show you how to recreate an Outlook mail profile for a single user and for an entire organization.

Recreating a mail profile can help when, for example:

• The current profile is corrupted
• You want to delete another mail profile
• You’ve switched to another Outlook version
• Outlook loses connection with Exchange after a server migration

First, I’ll recreate a mail profile for a single user, manually.

Before I begin, I need to close Outlook. Then I go to Control Panel, Mail and click Show Profiles.

Next, I click add and let the wizard configure a new mail profile.

Once the mail profile is added, I set it as the default one. I’m now going to start Outlook to see if all went well.

Everything is in order. This method is quick and easy, but if you need to recreate profiles for the whole company, there is a better way for that.

First, I need to create a script file that will create a new Outlook mail profile. I launch Notepad, paste the code from this video’s description* and change name, for example, to Profile. I save the file with a BAT extension to a network share. Mind that users need to have read access rights to this location.

Now on the Domain Controller, I launch the Group Policy Management console from the Start menu, right-click my domain, and create a new Group Policy object. Let’s name it “Create New Outlook Profile”

I right-click the newly created object and select Edit.

In the left menu, I need to find user logon scripts and then double-click Logon.

Finally, I click Add, Browse, select the BAT file I’ve created earlier, and “ok” my way out.

The next time any user logs in, the script will create a new Outlook profile and set it as default. And once Outlook starts, the user needs to follow a simple Next-Next-Finish wizard and… that’s it.

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Additional information

* The code depends on the Outlook version:
2019/2016:
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles\<name>
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook" /v DefaultProfile /t REG_SZ /d "<name>" /F

2013:
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Profiles\<name>
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook" /v DefaultProfile /t REG_SZ /d "<name>" /F

2010:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\<name>"
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles" /v DefaultProfile /t REG_SZ /d "<name>" /F
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options" /v PickLogonProfile /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f