Help Outlook

[Edmond]

So my PC did some kind of update the other day and it's backed up to onedrive, but it has taken access of my outlook away form the the PC locally, i now can't get any emails by just opening the outlook app, it wants me to sign into each email, but when i try it says the account is already registered and to create a new account?

I have disabled onedrive but i can't get outlook to work, any idea what i have done to fuck this up?

TIA

 

[Scouse]

Well @Edmond. Erm. Nope.

I was kinda hoping someone else would tho.

You fixed it yet?

 

[Edmond]

Unfortunately not, driving me mad.

 

[old.Osy]

We'd need more details chap.

Outlook - is it the Office 365 suite version, and is it installed locally on the PC? Do you have local email storage (emails saved within a .pst file)?

Email account / accounts - Is it from Microsoft (outlook.com, live.com, hotmail.com, etc) or some other email provider? Can you login to your email account if you visit the webmail page from a browser? (for Microsoft related, try going to outlook.com and signing in)

PC - Do you login with a Microsoft account or a local one?

There's more, but let's start with this for now.

Happy to assist remotely if you like, I'm sure we can sort it quickly. Should you want that, just PM pe privately.

 

[Edmond]

We'd need more details chap.

Outlook - is it the Office 365 suite version, and is it installed locally on the PC? Do you have local email storage (emails saved within a .pst file)?

Email account / accounts - Is it from Microsoft (outlook.com, live.com, hotmail.com, etc) or some other email provider? Can you login to your email account if you visit the webmail page from a browser? (for Microsoft related, try going to outlook.com and signing in)

PC - Do you login with a Microsoft account or a local one?

There's more, but let's start with this for now.

Happy to assist remotely if you like, I'm sure we can sort it quickly. Should you want that, just PM pe privately.

Hey, yes its the 365 version that's installed locally, i just hit the outlook icon in the taskbar to open it up, and yes everything stores in to a .pst file, whis where i think the issue is.

OneDrive uploaded everything from my doc folder (which is where the .pst files are ) and now outlook cant see them

 

[old.Osy]

Hey, yes its the 365 version that's installed locally, i just hit the outlook icon in the taskbar to open it up, and yes everything stores in to a .pst file, whis where i think the issue is.

OneDrive uploaded everything from my doc folder (which is where the .pst files are ) and now outlook cant see them

Yeah so, the problem is OneDrive and Outlook are wrestling on accessing that .ost or .pst file.

As OneDrive is tasked with keeping your files backed-up, it notices a new version of that file, tries to grab it to upload it - and because OneDrive is the first to run at start-up before Outlook, OneDrive "wins" and gets to "lock" that file for its own use.

Outlook, when started, needs to have that file 'locked" so it can freely access it for read/write. What this means is, the contents of that file constantly change, so the signature hash for that file gets updated very frequently. It can not be accessed / locked by something else, and that is why Outlook fails to start.

As a rule of thumb, your .ost / ,pst file location should not be under OneDrive's protection. Also applies to OneNote and other Office apps that have files they access frequently.

Solution: Go into OneDrive settings - Account - Choose Folders. Remove the location where Outlook runs out of, and/or where the .ost or .pst files are stored.

Default would be C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\

 

[Edmond]

Thank you, that all makes so much sense. I will give it a try when i get home, i shall let you know how i get on. Appreciate your help