moving Outlook profile between 2 computers - Do I need to create email accounts in the new instance?

• I need to move an Outlook profile with 8 email accounts (so there are 8 .ost files) from one Computer to another.


• On top (not sure whether that's actually relevent to my question) the source profile is Outllok 2016 while the target machine has Outlook 2010 installed. I am aware that I'll need to convert .ost datafiles to .pst datafiles and I know hoe to appraoch this

my question here is:

Do I have to create accounts (or at least one account) in the new Outlook 2010 instance before I can link them to the existing datafiles or can I skip the account creation on first startup and will get ready accounts by connecting to the datafiles?

Answer

Outlook stores the settings for an email account in the Windows registry, not in the data file. Therefore it will be necessary to move your accounts as follows:

1. Copy the data files to the new computer.


2. For each account, go through the new account wizard as though you were adding the account for the first time.


3. During the wizard instead of letting Outlook create a new data file, point it to the correct PST file.

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It's worth noting that email accounts that store their data in an OST file don't require the process above. That's because unlike a PST file, an OST file is just a copy of the data stored on the server. In other words, all of the account's content is stored on the server. For these types of accounts all that's necessary to add the account to a new instance of Outlook is to add the account and let Outlook rebuild the OST file by syncing with the server.