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.
[...] time I’m in Kansas City … I owe John Klimcak a beer. After reading my question about the temporary mailbox, John asked the simplest question: “Have you tried recreating your [Outlook] [...]
Same problem here: I figured it had something to do with my profile, so I deleted all traces of the outlook profile, rebuilt it, and poof…back in business.
I hope this helps. -doug
Just a FYI to other users stumbling across this page from google. I solved this issue by making a new POP3 mail account with a data store, setting both to default, opening and closing outlook, deleting exchange account and store then making new exchange account with data store, setting them to default and downloading everything from server again – then deleting the POP3 account and store. Phew, that missing button would’ve been alot easier. Worst part is I have to do this for 30 users this week
Thanks the profile deal works like a charm.
Thanks! I had to go into settings->control panel->mail to kill the profile and reset it. You got to thank MS for creating thousands of jobs for IT people to support basic e-mail.
Thank you! I was desperate and found this site. It stumped my ISP, but not the guy from Kansas. Brilliant!
dougperry, you’re a saint. In fact I think you deserve a cake.
I was starting to tear my hair out over this issue.
All you really would need to delete is the .NK2 file or you could just rename it to something liek “profile.nk2.old”
Deleting or renaming the NK2 file also the side-effect of removing all your cached email addresses that autofill as you start typing them in the To: field.
I had the problem of having multiple profiles, so to fix I simply did the following:
Start> Control Panel> Mail> Show Profiles>
Then I just deleted the profile that was causing the issue and then re-added it as “new”. The problem is that I then lost all of my older email before the problem occurred. Weird…