Windows 7: Outlook 2010 cannot change POP3 account to IMAP

Hi all

I haven't discovered a way yet of switching a POP3 account to IMAP without deleting and re-defining the email account in Outlook 2010.

IMAP is a better way if you access the same email account from multiple machines. If the account was originally defined with POP3 there doesn't seem any mechanism to change it to IMAP without deleting and re-creating the entire account.

This means backing up and restoring all the messages, address books etc before doing this -- a bit of a pain if you have to do this for 50 - 100 users and their email accounts.

Any quick fix or have I missed something.

Cheers
jimbo

You haven't missed anything, as far as I know there is no way to change pop to imap.

A bit of a warning though, in the past when I have switched users from pop to imap and I added the additional IMAP account then moved the stuff from the pop account folders to the IMAP, sometimes email etc just disappears completely despite saying it had copied.

Hi there
Thanks for the info. - We'll just do this manually then over a period.

For Backup I used the backup program from the MS site pfbackup.exe which saves all the stuff easily and then can be re-loaded into the new relevant folders.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/1...backup-add-in/

This won't re-load directly into Outlook 2010 but you can IMPORT the .pst file created by the backup.

This gets ALL the folders including the users archived mail. I'm surprised this backup feature was never more widely publicised by MS.

Cheers
jimbo

I to attempted this little task, albeit came up short. Ran about hundred Googles, and Bing to no avail. Sorry couldn't help you out there Jimbo.

Hi there
Thanks Lee -- We've resigned ourselves to doing this manually in preparation for switching to Outlook 2010.

Some jobs still have to be done in "the old fashioned way -- alas".

Cheers
jimbo

If you have to set the accounts up manually then if it's the same as 2007 you could set a dummy account up then export the reg keys then re-import them into your new machines, I know that some things such as the username & pass would still need changing but it could save a little time.

Thanks John. . .good info.

Hello!

I have just got that issue: email just disappeared without warning. Would deleted file recovery soft help or there is some other way?