Transferring Outlook 365 settings from old machine to new machine.

[GarethD]

I was expecting my new PC on Monday, but DPD are now delivering today, so my research time has gone, while have said my bookmarks, is there a way to save my Outlook365 settings so I can easily transfer them to the new machine when it arrives (if all goes well, after 10:30am).

Thank you.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I was expecting my new PC on Monday, but DPD are now delivering today, so my research time has gone, while have said my bookmarks, is there a way to save my Outlook365 settings so I can easily transfer them to the new machine when it arrives (if all goes well, after 10:30am).

Thank you.

What settings do you mean?

 

[GarethD]

POP3, IMAP - account settings.

 

[SpyderTracks]

POP3, IMAP - account settings.

Is your account not O365 then? What’s the domain that you’re connecting to? Is it a private one or public?

 

[GarethD]

I use outlook 365, connecting to BTinternet.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I use outlook 365, connecting to BTinternet.

Oh dear.... I'd highly recommend getting off BTInternet email, it's quite literally not supported at all and incredibly insecure. BT used to use the Yahoo domain but refused to renew their contract so were booted off Yahoo, and now it's quite literally about 20 years out of date and just no security whatsoever.

You'll find very few mobile apps will connect to it at all anymore for this reason.

I would strongly recommend migrating to a public service like Outlook.com or GMail which are both free and very secure.

The reason I know this is because my parents have been with BTMail and I've had the hassel of trying to support that useless service for them for years until I eventually persuaded them to move to outlook.com.

But anyway, to move your settings is quite involved. Pop and IMAP are both legacy connections not really used anymore, so there's no easy way to migrate settings.

The Outlook 2016 email settings are maintained in a registry key.

You can export that key and import it back in to Office 2016 on a reinstall. This will put all of the settings for your previously configured email accounts, and data files, back into Outlook.

The key is: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles\Outlook

This key does not store any the actual emails, just the email account and data file (pst and ost) settings in Outlook, which will save you from having to reconfigure all of that stuff. If you are using pop3 accounts, the emails will be in your pst files, which you must backup externally before you reinstall Windows. The pst and ost files will not be deleted, but will remain if all you are doing is uninstalling/reinstalling Office 2016. If you are using Exchange email, then your emails will be in an ost file, retained locally and online.

Keep in mind that when you reinstall Office, even though you have local copies in your backed-up pst file, it will probably download ALL of the emails in your online pop3 accounts (which could be several thousand). If you have your pop3 Outlook settings configured to delete the emails from the server (after 14 days is the default) after you retrieve them, then your old emails will be in your backed up pst file, and the new Outlook install will only be downloading the 14 days of emails that you left on the server. If you don't backup the pst files, and you have your pop3 accounts configured to delete your emails after 14 days, then you will have lost all of your old emails forever.

 

[Martinr36]

Just open outlook, go to the file tab, and click add account and follow the instructions in the wizard

 

[GarethD]

Thank you all.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Just open outlook, go to the file tab, and click add account and follow the instructions in the wizard

Believe me, it's not that simple with BTInternet, doesn't work at all. It's literally a broken service from decades ago.

Most clients don't support it in the first place because it's so insecure, they don't want to take the risk.

 

[Martinr36]

I must admit i'm not a lover of most things to do with BT say's he who has EE as his mobile phone provider