Outlook profile stores all your email accounts and passwords. Follow the below steps to backup Outlook profile in Windows 10.
Outlook is one of the most popular email clients for Windows. One of the biggest reasons being its features and ease of use. In Outlook, you can add any number of email accounts and manage them in one place. After all, if you are using an email client, it is highly probable that you have multiple email accounts. For instance, I have eight email accounts for several different purposes like shopping, subscriptions, finance, personal, work, etc. Since it is not that intuitive to individually manage those email accounts via browser, I use the desktop email client to make my life a tad bit easier.
As good as it is, if you are reinstalling Windows or moving from one computer to another, it can is a lot of work to manually add email accounts to Outlook. The good thing is, you can avoid that by backing up the Outlook profile.
In case you don’t know, Outlook automatically creates a new profile whenever you first start using it. Every email account you add to Outlook is saved to the profile. If you want to, you can even create custom profiles to better manage your email accounts. So, to backup Outlook email accounts and passwords, all you have to do is export Outlook profile.
Without ado, let me show the steps to backup Outlook profile in Windows.
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Note:
- The steps shown below can be followed in Windows 7 and 8 too.
- Following steps all only applicable to Office Outlook desktop versions. Not the built-in Windows 10 Mail app.
- It will only backup email accounts and their settings. Not the emails itself.
Steps to Backup Outlook Profile
Unlike other email clients which store profiles in folders, Outlook stores them as registry keys. So, to back up the Outlook email accounts and passwords, you have to export the Outlook profile registry key. Though sounds hard, it is pretty easy.
1. The first thing you need to do is open the registry editor. To do that, search for “Registry Editor” in the start menu and click on the result.
2. After opening it, go to the following folder depending on your Outlook version. In my case, I’m using Outlook 2019. To make things a bit easier, copy the path, paste it in the address bar and press Enter.
- For Outlook 2016+ or Outlook 365:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles
- Outlook 2013:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Profiles
- For Outlook 2010:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles
3. The profiles folder is where Outlook stores all the email account details. Here, right-click on the “Profiles” folder and select the “Export” option.
4. In the destination window, go to where you want to save the file, name it, and click on the “Save” button. Make sure that the “Save as type” is set to “Registration Files (*.reg)“.
That is it. You’ve successfully backed up the Outlook profile. Go to the destination folder and you will see the backup file. Keep this file safe and secure. Do not share it with anyone.
To restore the email accounts in Outlook, follow the steps below.
Using Thunderbird email client? Follow these steps to backup the Thunderbird profile in Windows.
Restore Outlook Profile
To restore the Outlook profile all you have to do is restore the backed up reg file.
Note: Restoring the file will replace any profiles and email accounts you already added.
1. First, close the Outlook application if it is running.
2. Find the .reg file you backed up and double-click on it.
3. You will see a prompt asking if you’d like to merge the reg file with Registry. Click on the “Yes” button and then “Ok” button.
4. Now, open the Outlook application. You will be asked to choose a profile. Unless you customized the profile name, the default profile name is “Outlook“. Select it from the drop-down menu and click on the “Ok” button.
That is all. You’ve successfully imported Outlook backup. All your email accounts should be restored and ready to go.
I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.
