Can you create a PRF file starting from the existing Outlook settings?

[Jerry]

Outlook 2003: I have an Exchange server account,
4 POP3 accounts, and 3 HTTP accounts in my
profile. I activate different combinations of these in
Send/Receive, to monitor my accounts when I'm traveling.
Back in office, I only use the Exchange Server account.

Now I had to re-create the profile, and manually
entering all the setup info for these accounts is quite
a job (have to dig for different usernames, passwords
and server names).

I know one can use a PRF file to set these and other
settings, so my question is: instead of manually
entering all the stuff (e.g. using Microsoft's CIW).
could one populate a PRF file with the settings in an
existing profile?

Alternatively, would just exporting and later importing
the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\
Profiles\<profile name> do the trick of quickly
re-creating a profile?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No. There's no tool to create a .prf from an existing profile.

Exporting and importing the profile key is essentially a more granular
backup approach than backing up the entire registry.

 

[Jerry]

Thanks a lot for your reply. Allow me to say that
I feel honored receiving help from the great Sue Mosher.
Most of my Outlook knowledge in the first place
comes from the stuff you wrote.

I was wondering if the mentioned registry key contains everything
needed to define a profile, or is there something more, and
if so, where?

I did a test, exported the mentioned key, replaced all occurrences
of the profile name in the .reg file with a new name,
fired Outlook with this new profile, did sending and
receiving using all the different accounts and it seems to work
fine!


| No. There's no tool to create a .prf from an existing profile.
|
| Exporting and importing the profile key is essentially a more granular
| backup approach than backing up the entire registry.
|
| --
| Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
| Author of
| Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
| Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
|
|
|
| | > Outlook 2003: I have an Exchange server account,
| > 4 POP3 accounts, and 3 HTTP accounts in my
| > profile. I activate different combinations of these in
| > Send/Receive, to monitor my accounts when I'm traveling.
| > Back in office, I only use the Exchange Server account.
| >
| > Now I had to re-create the profile, and manually
| > entering all the setup info for these accounts is quite
| > a job (have to dig for different usernames, passwords
| > and server names).
| >
| > I know one can use a PRF file to set these and other
| > settings, so my question is: instead of manually
| > entering all the stuff (e.g. using Microsoft's CIW).
| > could one populate a PRF file with the settings in an
| > existing profile?
| >
| > Alternatively, would just exporting and later importing
| > the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
| > Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\
| > Profiles\<profile name> do the trick of quickly
| > re-creating a profile?
| >
| >
|
|

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You should believe your own testing. <g> Note that importing that key on
another machine probably wouldn't work, because all the necessary files
wouldn't be there and might not be creatable.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers