Sunday, April 13, 2014

Change Default Data File Location in Outlook

Recently, my laptop crashed, and outlook configurations got changed, and to my surprise the outlook default profile data file for offline cached data file was getting created inside some folders which was not part of the backed up folder. I wanted to change it to my documents path. There is no option to do it in outlook 2013, if you want to do so, you need to edit the registry. 

Here is how to do it. 

Start - Regedit 
Navigate To: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook

Right-Click Outlook Select New then String Value

Type “ForceOSTPath” without the quotes for the variable name and press Enter then Double-Click ForceOSTPath to Edit the string

Type the location you want your data files to use.  In my case it was 
C:\Users\pshetty1\Documents\Outlook Files

Click OK. You will need to close Outlook in order for Outlook to use this new setting.  Now when you create a new OST data file Outlook will put it in the new location. 

Remember that, after this you need to create a new profile, and make outlook to use this profile by default, and you can delete the old profile.