Locked-out of Outlook because you tried to add an account thrice and it gave up on you? Annoying, but easy to fix. Here’s how!
Outlook tries to open a profile on load, but if the only profile doesn’t work it just closes and you’re basically locked-out of the program. If you’ve just installed Outlook, you’ll see a wizard on load that guides you through the process of adding an account, but if you try to add an account with invalid settings thrice, it says “Successful” even when it’s not, tries to load the profile, fails, closes and throws you out in the cold.
Massively frustrating but the solution isn’t in Outlook at all:
- Ensure Outlook isn’t running
- Open Control Panel
- Search for and open “Mail”
- Remove the existing (broken) profile
- Ensure “When starting Microsoft Outlook, use this profile” is set to “Prompt for a new profile to be used”
- Open Outlook
- Try to add the account again
Then when you start Outlook it’ll be like loading it for the first time, but if it’s happening repeatedly, you’re probably just using the wrong SMTP settings…