Outlook: How to Reset & Rebuild Profile

Remove Existing Profile

Run: control.exe > click on Mail

Click on Show Profiles

Click on Remove > Yes > OK

Purge Local Outlook Folder of all previous files

# Purge Outlook Profile Folder

$outlookItems=(get-childitem -Recurse -Attributes !Directory "$env:localappdata\Microsoft\Outlook" -force).FullName;
$handles = handle;
if (!(handles)){
    
    }
# Requires handle.exe from Systernals. returns pid
function findPidLockedFile{
	param($lockedFile)
	$scrollingPid="";
    $lockingPids=@(); 
	foreach ($line in $handles) {
		 if ($line -like "*pid:*") {$scrollingPid=$line}
		if ($line -like "*$lockedFile*") {
			#[void]($scrollingPid -match "(.*)\spid:");
			[void]($scrollingPid -match "pid:\s(.*)\s");
			$lockingPids+=,$matches[1];}
	     }
    return $lockingPids|get-unique
}


foreach ($x in $outlookItems){
	try{
		Remove-Item $x -Force
		}
	catch{
		$lockingPids=findPidLockedFile $x;
		$lockingPids|%{stop-process -id $_ -force};
		Remove-Item $x -Force
		}
}

Trigger Outlook and re-create profile

a. Start Outlook in Safe Mode

Start > Run > Outlook.exe /safe > wait for Outlook to load > close Outlook > wait 1 minute for system memory of the application to clear

b. Start Outlook as normal

Start > Run > Outlook.exe > Follow wizard to create new profile

What Problems Does this Solve?

1. This one (after the “phantom” DNS record of mail.domain.com has been removed):
   
2. And this one…
   
   
   
3. Freezing or crashing Outlook cases that are isolated to certain lucky users.