Creating a New Outlook Profile

If you are an Outlook email user and you haven't yet created a new profile since your mailbox was moved to Exchange 2003 servers then we strongly recommend you create a new profile.

Reasons to Create New Profile

Your outgoing emails could have question marks in them instead of valid text. This is because the Exchange server is using Unicode and your client isn't.

You won't be able to have a mailbox larger than 2Gig synched to your computer unless you do this. This is because only the newer format (Unicode) can support larger Offline Storage files.

Other errors, some of which are documented here.

When to do this

When you have a fairly fast internet connection and some time - probably best to start it before you leave for the night and just let it run for as long as it takes to fully synchronize. The synchronization is happening in the background and you will still be able to compose and read emails. However, you will notice that it has a noticeable impact on responsiveness in Outlook.

Also, when you get a new profile you'll have to reconfigure things like secondary mailboxes; personal/archive folders; favorite folders; etc. Anything which wasn't a part of the server configuration is going to get lost. It might help to do a screen shot or two of what you have so you can remember to put it back in the new profile.

How

Close Outlook;
Start;
Settings;
Control Panel;
Mail (if using Classic view) or User Accounts; then Mail (if using Category view);
Show Profiles;
Add;
Give it a name like youruserid-unicode (e.g. mjcrume-unicode) so you know this is your new profile;
OK;
Next;
select Microsoft Exchange Server;
Next;
enter EXCH-PROFILE.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU in the "Microsoft Exchange Server" box;
leave the "Cached Exchange Mode" box checked if you want to always have a local copy of your email on your computer (this is recommended for laptops and remote users, but not for Windows workstations directly connected to the LAN at SLAC);
enter your userid (e.g. mjcrume) in the "User Name" field;
press Check Name button to make sure it finds your account;
Next;
Finish;
Occasionally new profiles have a problem with delivering all email to local computer. You should go just go and verify that delivery location is correct. In the upper window click on the profile you just created;
Properties;
E-Mail Accounts button;
Next;
Make sure the data in the lower left window "Deliver new e-mail to the following location:" begins with "Mailbox - "
If it says Personal Folders then click the arrow and select the other option;
Finish;
Close;
Now you are back at the Mail window and should select "Always use this profile" option at the bottom;
then select your new unicode profile from the drop-down list;
press OK to finish;
Start Outlook. It will let you know it is initializing things and open your mailbox for the first time.

IMPORTANT!!
Turn off Auto-Archive:  Tools; Options; Other tab; Autoarchive button. Uncheck top box.

Verifying Your Profile is Unicode Mode

Within Outlook, right-click on the top level folder (e.g. Crume, Mary J.) in the folder list at the left;
select Properties;
press Advanced button;
select Advanced tab;
make sure it says this at the bottom "Outlook is running in Unicode mode against the Microsoft Exchange server".

If it doesn't say this then you may have left an Outlook open during the process and just need to close it to get the opportunity to open the new profile. Or, you may have failed to select the new unicode profile to be the default one and you need to go back and do that.

Synchronizing Your E-mail to Your PC

After creating the profile, you may want to synchronize your e-mail to your PC. There are two ways to do this depending on the size of your mailbox or the size of your e-mail folders. One is Cached Exchange Mode which is used to synchronize all your mail folders to your local computer.
Offline Access is used when you want  to pick and choose which e-mail folders to synchronized. For details see: more info

Need Help?

If you need assistance with this please contact your Desktop Administrator or mail-admin if you don't have a Desktop Admin.