Today I was assisting a remote desktop client who wanted to have multiple accounts set up in Microsoft Outlook. Usually this isn’t a problem but the way she wanted it just can’t be done.

Here is what she wanted… She wanted to be able to have 1 Microsoft Outlook window open with her personal account and a completely separate Microsoft Outlook window open with her business account.

This is not an unreasonable request. It just can’t be done. You can create separate outlook profiles and have the choice of which to open, but when you open another window it remains in the same account as the first that was opened. This does not accomplish what she wanted.

Fortunately this client was easy to please (Thank you if you’re reading this…) and we set her up with an IMAP account so that she could separate her 2 accounts into different folders located on the left hand side in the “Mail Folders” window of Outlook. That pleased her. Now she just has to get used to the delete and purge issue with IMAP.

If she had Outlook 2007, she could have done the folder separation with different POP3 accounts but since she had an earlier version of Outlook, going with IMAP was our only choice.

If you are looking for a way to separate your different POP3 email accounts within Microsoft Outlook 2007, look to this page to find out how to do it. Look for the “Directly assign the account a Folder Set” at the bottom of the page. Thank you to howto-outlook.com for the info!

Happy Computing,
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

1. Richard Keene Says:
   August 16th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

   That is a very common request. I’m surprised there are not more options insofar as a work around. Seems like something that should have been patched into older versions of outlook a long time ago.

   Richard Keene
   ITCSNY