Forum Discussion
Ghost IMAP accounts in sidebar from unsuccessful setup outlook 365
I had to set up a new email for a person yesterday and they use outlook 365 and we had a heck of a time, we were able to set it up on a phone and their laptop that has office 2019 on it. However, th...
Not sure if you ever got the ghost accounts removed as it's been some time, but I figured out a solution. Close outlook. Open the registry to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles
Select your profile and backup that profile by exporting before doing anything. Look at every sub key. There will be many due to the 20+ ghost accounts. Within each key look for the entry in the right side that has 001f6700, Doubleclick on the value and scroll down looking at the text on the right side, looking for the name of the email account and the corresponding ost file. They should be numbered sequentially, i.e. emailaccount.ost, emailaccount(1).ost, etc. One of them is going to be the legitimate account and left alone. In my case it was (10).ost. Check before you start in Outlook for yours. There are going to be 2 sub keys associated with every ghost account. Write them down as you go.
When you're ready to delete them open C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. Your Outlook ost data files will be there including the ghost accounts. Delete both sub keys and the corresponding ost file. Open Outlook and they will be gone. I tested it out on one and was successful and carried on with the other 8. That's what worked for me with no issue, but it's tedious work. This was a Win11 machine.
Select your profile and backup that profile by exporting before doing anything. Look at every sub key. There will be many due to the 20+ ghost accounts. Within each key look for the entry in the right side that has 001f6700, Doubleclick on the value and scroll down looking at the text on the right side, looking for the name of the email account and the corresponding ost file. They should be numbered sequentially, i.e. emailaccount.ost, emailaccount(1).ost, etc. One of them is going to be the legitimate account and left alone. In my case it was (10).ost. Check before you start in Outlook for yours. There are going to be 2 sub keys associated with every ghost account. Write them down as you go.
When you're ready to delete them open C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. Your Outlook ost data files will be there including the ghost accounts. Delete both sub keys and the corresponding ost file. Open Outlook and they will be gone. I tested it out on one and was successful and carried on with the other 8. That's what worked for me with no issue, but it's tedious work. This was a Win11 machine.