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I've recently reinstalled Outlook 2007 and am having an issue with existing emails being downloaded again.

I backed up and imported my PST so all original messages are in Outlook already. I have Outlook configured as a POP account and set to leave messages on the server for two weeks. This is because I have my phone setup as IMAP and need to access the messages on there. For various reasons, I don't want to setup Outlook as IMAP.

It seems that the messages are being recognized and pulled down again. Is there any way around this?

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No. POP3 messages are indexed by a UUID and it is up to the client to remember which UUIDs have been downloaded. This information is not stored in the PST file.

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  • Ok, so I guess I'm out of luck this time. I presume the downloaded UUIDs are stored in a file(s) by Outlook. If I need to do this again in the future, is there a way to backup that file?
    – Ryan Brooks
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 13:53
  • The data should be stored with the account settings somewhere. I am not sure where Outlook stores it exactly.
    – Majenko
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 14:15
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Outlook keeps the information about which emails have already been downloaded in the .PST file (for versions after 2000). However the information is linked to the specific email account via a unique ID. When you recreate an email account (in the same or in a new profile) then it gets assigned a different unique ID from the original email account

Hence, although the .PST file contains the information it cannot be linked to the email account as the IDs don't match.

I have found a piece of software called MoBackup ( www.mobackup.com ) which allows you to backup your email account info and "restore" it to a new profile or new PC with the same ID as the original account. (using their "Restore Outlook Profile 1:1" option)

You only need to do this once and you can then copy the .PST file to the new PC / Profile and all the information about which emails have already been downloaded is preserved.

Note that MoBackup won't restore the passwords assoicated with your email accounts (citing security reasons) so you need to re-input the passwords after the restore.

If you want to use MoBackup to copy email account information from one PC to another (and keep the same unique ID), then the version of Outlook on both PCs has to be the same.

I have tested this on Outlook 2007 and it works brilliantly.

The software is not free but worth the money I reckon.

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