Preparing Outlook for first use. This one time upgrade may take a few minutes

I bought an Office 365 subscription today as I was starting to see problems with Outlook 2007. Nothing serious but it was clumsy when dealing with IMAP folders. I assumed Outlook 2013 would be better. I'm 6 hours into trying to get through the install and becoming very concerned. All other Office 365 (is there a difference between 365 and 2013?) programs work - Word, Excel etc. Outlook however says

The "few minutes" is pretty vague. Should it be done within half an hour on a reasonably fast modern machine (6GB RAM, Windows Index 4.3)

On one of the first attempts it complained that another version of Outlook was present and that it could not run. I went through the process of completely uninstalling Office 2007. Rebooted. Tried again. No conflict message this time but just a hang.

Ran the Microsoft FixIt tools to remove all previous and current Office versions. Rebooted. Reinstalled Office 365. Same result - Hang.

Ran inbox repair tool on my PST file. Reported errors and said they were fixed. Tried Outlook again. Same result.

Ran inbox repair tool again. Found same number of errors. Claimed to have repaired them again. Tried to Launch Outlook again. Same result.

Launched Outlook 2013 in safe mode. Chose "Outlook" as profile name. Don't know what that does. Does it ignore my PST and start a fresh one? Anyway, same result - Hang.

So after about 6 hours of installs, uninstalls, reboots and repairs I still can't run the software I just bought.

Suggestions?

Robin Winsor

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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Answer

CalgaryVet

Okay, I've figured out how to get around this. Here's what worked for me.

Outlook 2013 configures it's mail account and folders etc through the Windows control panel, not through the program itself. When its trying to launch, it doggedly goes after the .PST file it thinks it wants and gets stuck.

Shut down the hung Outlook startup.

Go to Control Panel and find Mail (yep, it's new - wasn't there before)

Use this to delete any profiles and to make a new one. It cannot be the same name as your old .PST file.

Set up the mail settings for this new profile.

Then launch Outlook - at this point it should actually open instead of hanging.

Your latest mail from your ISP's server will be there but all your old stuff stored in your PST file won't be.

Go to the File menu and select Open & Export

Use Open Outlook Data File to open your old .PST

It will appear as an extra set of folders under Personal Folders.

From there you can drag and drop folders into the new folder structure until the old one is just empty folders.

I haven't figured out how to disconnect the husk of the old one once it's contents have been transferred but good enough for now.

Seriously, this is horrible software quality. Microsoft should be ashamed. If it took you ages to find this, don't feel bad. It's taken me all day and I've been doing this sort of thing for years. Best of luck - I hope this helps.

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Preparing Outlook for first use. This one time upgrade may take a few minutes

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Preparing Outlook for first use. This one time upgrade may take a few minutes

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