While setting up an email account in Microsoft Outlook (after some data recovery from a failing hard drive), I found myself in a typical catch-22 situation:

I had created a temporary account, and then created a second account (with the intention of making the second account the default, after I had transferred email across

After copying the emails, Outlook would not make the second account the default… I received no error messages, but the default “tick” did not change.

So the next step was: delete the first (default) account, but I obviously cannot delete a default account.

Next: go to the data file management tab, and just delete/unlink the data file, and thats when I got the message:

You cannot delete this Outlook data file. Configuration information in the file is being copied to your new default data file.

OK, so I cannot make another account the default, and I cannot remove the account, or remove the data file, because they are somehow locked.

The solution is somewhat awkward, but does work:

• Quit from Outlook
• Control Panel -> Email Setup -> Create a new profile
• Call the new profile whatever you like
• Make the new profile the default
• Setup the correct POP3 / IMAP email account(s) within the new profile (you can add specific data files later, if you need to copy some more emails)
• exit the email setup window (note: this was all done without using outlook)
• restart the computer
• start outlook & check that the accounts look ok. If you like, add data files, so that you can transfer emails
• quit outlook
• restart the email setup in control panel
• delete the old profile
• smile 🙂