Making a temporary mailbox permanent

Last night I described a rather pathetic attempt to improve my Outlook 2007 performance by deleting and rebuilding my Exchange mailbox. I thought I was back in business but it turns out there was one more significant hurdle.

When I opened Outlook, I got the following message: “Your mailbox has been temporarily moved on Microsoft Exchange server. A temporary mailbox exists, but might not have all of your previous data. You can connect to the temporary mailbox or work offline with all of your old data. If you choose to work with your old data, you cannot send or receive e-mail messages.” I had three options: Use Temporary Mailbox, Use Old Data, or Cancel.

OK, this is not quite as bad as Sophie’s Choice, but I still wasn’t happy with my options. I wanted a button that said “yeah, you dumb-ass computer, I know I have a new mailbox and I’ve already imported all my old data into it, so make that temporary mailbox a permanent one.” I guess the Microsoft developers just didn’t have enough room on the button icons for that one.

I Googled “connect to the temporary mailbox” and got exactly one result. It told me to delete my .ost file (again!) and resynch to the Exchange mailbox. So I went into C:\Users\david.SCHRAG\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook (remember, folks, this is Vista) — and there was no .ost file there at all! Just the one I’d renamed to outlook.ost.bak last night. So I went into my Exchange account settings and unchecked the Use Cached Exchange Mode box. Again I got the “temporary mailbox” warning. I re-checked the cached mode box, restarted Outlook, and still got the same warning. Just for fun, I tried using old data this time. Nuh-uh:

Now I’m off to another meeting. I’m stumped. I’m hoping some kind soul in Schlogland will point me in the right direction.