How to Permanently Remove the Wunderlist Add-in from Outlook Classic (2026 Fix)

How to Permanently Remove the Obsolete Wunderlist Add-in from Outlook Classic

Validated workaround for Windows and Outlook Classic

Important: This workaround was successfully validated on Outlook Classic with Office Home & Business 2024, Windows 11 and a personal Microsoft account. Other Outlook or account types may behave differently.

At a glance

Item Details

Estimated time 10–15 minutes

Difficulty Intermediate

Risk Low

Outlook restart required Yes

Windows restart required Yes

Tested environment Outlook Classic, Office Home & Business 2024, Windows 11, personal Microsoft account

When to use this guide

• Wunderlist and Quick Add appear on the Message tab when an email is opened.

• Clicking Wunderlist produces an add-in loading error.

• Removing Wunderlist from Customize Ribbon only works temporarily.

• Clearing or renaming the Office WEF cache does not permanently remove it.

• Wunderlist does not appear as a normal COM add-in.

Before you start

Close Outlook and every other Microsoft Office application. Open Task Manager and confirm that OUTLOOK.EXE is not running.

Step 1 – Open PowerShell

Open Windows PowerShell or PowerShell 7. Administrator rights are not normally required.

Step 2 – Locate the cached Wunderlist manifest

Copy and paste the complete command below into PowerShell, then press Enter:

$matches = Get-ChildItem "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Wef" -Recurse -File |

Where-Object { $_.Name -notlike "*.metadata" } |

Select-String -Pattern "Wunderlist" -SimpleMatch

$matches |

Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path -Unique |

ForEach-Object {

Write-Host "`nFILE: $_"

Get-Content -LiteralPath $_ -TotalCount 25

}

Expected result: PowerShell should show a manifest containing entries similar to:

<Id>56d1645a-c00a-4c3b-b676-63bde48359c3</Id>

<Version>1.7</Version>

<ProviderName>Wunderlist</ProviderName>

<DisplayName DefaultValue="Wunderlist" />

If PowerShell returns no result, stop here. Open Outlook once, open an email, close Outlook completely and then repeat Step 2 so Outlook has an opportunity to rebuild the web-add-in cache.

Step 3 – Copy the manifest to the Desktop

Run the following PowerShell command. It automatically finds the Wunderlist manifest and copies it to the Desktop as Wunderlist-manifest.xml:

$source = Get-ChildItem "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Wef" -Recurse -File |

Where-Object {

$_.Name -notlike "*.metadata" -and

(Select-String -LiteralPath $_.FullName -Pattern "<ProviderName>Wunderlist</ProviderName>" -SimpleMatch -Quiet -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)

} |

Select-Object -First 1

if (-not $source) {

Write-Error "The Wunderlist manifest could not be found. Re-run Step 2 and confirm that the manifest exists."

} else {

$destination = Join-Path $env:USERPROFILE "Desktop\Wunderlist-manifest.xml"

Copy-Item -LiteralPath $source.FullName -Destination $destination -Force

Write-Host "Wunderlist manifest copied to: $destination"

}

Expected result: a file named Wunderlist-manifest.xml appears on the Windows Desktop.

Step 4 – Add the manifest as a custom Outlook add-in

1. Open Outlook Classic.

2. Go to Home > Get Add-ins. In some versions, use Home > All Apps > Get Add-ins.

3. Select My Add-ins.

4. Scroll to Custom Add-ins.

5. Choose Add a custom add-in > Add from file.

6. Select Wunderlist-manifest.xml from the Desktop.

7. Accept the warning if Outlook asks whether the add-in should be trusted.

Expected result: Wunderlist appears under Custom Add-ins and is marked Added.

Step 5 – Remove the custom add-in

1. Under Custom Add-ins, locate Wunderlist.

2. Click the three-dot menu beside Wunderlist.

3. Choose Remove.

4. Confirm the removal.

This is the critical step. Adding the cached manifest as a custom add-in exposes a working Remove option for the otherwise orphaned Wunderlist registration.

Step 6 – Verify the fix

1. Close every Outlook window.

2. Use Task Manager to confirm OUTLOOK.EXE has stopped.

3. Reopen Outlook and open an email.

4. Check that Wunderlist and Quick Add are absent from the Message ribbon.

5. Close and reopen Outlook a second time and check again.

6. Reboot Windows, open Outlook and open an email one final time.

Success criteria

• Wunderlist no longer appears on the Message ribbon.

• Quick Add has disappeared.

• The add-in remains absent after two Outlook restarts.

• The add-in remains absent after a full Windows reboot.

Optional cleanup

• Delete Wunderlist-manifest.xml from the Desktop after the fix is confirmed.

• If you previously renamed the WEF folder to Wef.old and Outlook has created a new working Wef folder, you may delete Wef.old after confirming all add-ins work normally.

Do not delete individual manifest files from the active WEF folder. It contains manifests and resources for several Office add-ins, not only Wunderlist.

Why ordinary removal methods failed

Removing the ribbon group only hid the visible command. Clearing the WEF folder removed the local cache, but Outlook recreated the cache and restored the obsolete Wunderlist manifest. Temporarily importing that same cached manifest as a Custom Add-in allowed Outlook to expose a valid Remove command for the orphaned registration. On the tested system, removing it this way survived multiple Outlook restarts and a full Windows reboot.

Technical reference

Property Value

Provider Wunderlist

Manifest ID 56d1645a-c00a-4c3b-b676-63bde48359c3

Manifest version observed 1.7

Temporary filename Wunderlist-manifest.xml

Troubleshooting

The search command finds no Wunderlist manifest

Open Outlook, open an email containing the Wunderlist ribbon command, close Outlook fully and repeat the search. Also confirm that the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Wef exists.

Outlook refuses to add the XML file

Confirm that the copied file contains <ProviderName>Wunderlist</ProviderName> and that the filename ends in .xml. Re-run Step 3 rather than manually renaming a different file.

The Remove option is missing

Confirm that Wunderlist appears under Custom Add-ins and is marked Added. If it appears only in the general catalogue with an Add button, it has not yet been imported from the XML file.

Wunderlist returns after the reboot

Repeat Steps 4 and 5 and confirm that the custom add-in was removed through its three-dot menu. If it still returns, the account may be reprovisioning the add-in and Microsoft Support may need to remove the server-side registration.