How can I rename my Outlook 365 Mailbox Folder?

I purchased MS Office 365 Family some time ago and installed it. Everything worked fine, except Outlook which I could not get to work with Outlook.com correctly. I have uninstalled and re-installed Office 365 numerous times without luck. I originally had the account and mailbox names wrong which I thought I had figured out and fixed, but still no luck.

When I was originally trying to setup the free mailbox/account from Outlook.com it took me to a page to “Login/Register my Microsoft account”. I thought that it was asking for my old MSDN login’s recovery/id email address so I entered [email protected], bought a Microsoft Office 365 Family subscription and installed it, and everything in Office worked perfectly except Outlook. It turns out that this one mistake has caused endless problems trying to setup my outlook email functionality (see here for other ugliness How can I fix my Outlook.com to use the right email address).

I have been banging my head for weeks now trying to solve all of these various problems. I did get my mailbox created at outlook.com ([email protected]) and I did get that same name created as my primary account alias on my Microsoft account (though I have a couple of other non-primary aliases, including [email protected]).

At this point I think that I have all of the problems solved except one: When I run Outlook 365 (desktop) the main account/mailbox folder name is still [email protected].

After I re-installed the last time, when I went to Account properties -> Account Settings -> Account Settings… the dialog box’s “Email” tab showed the name as [email protected], and clicking on the Change… button would bring up another dialog box that would not let me change the name. Likewise the “Data Files” tab on the Account Settings… dialog also showed [email protected] as the name and clicking on Settings… would not let me change it.

I managed to get the name that shows in the email tab changed to [email protected] (and I do not remember how), and now the email functions (send, receive, etc.) of Outlook 365 all work correctly, using [email protected] as desired.

However, both the main folder name in the folder panel and the Data Files tab's name in the dialog still say [email protected]. I found this site (https://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/renameaccountandmailbox.htm) which purports to show how to change the Outlook account/mailbox folder name for every different type of Outlook, however, if I have read it correctly, it is saying that for an Exchange mailbox on Outlook 365 the mailbox Display Name can no longer be changed(!!!).

I NEED to change this, having my outlook.com mailbox be named Gmail.com is extremely confusing and misleading. Plus I may actually want to add my Gmail.com mailbox into my Outlook at some point.

Despite having uninstalled and re-installed it multiple times, it keeps picking up this d**n Gmail name from somewhere, where is it getting it from? I am not typing it in at anytime during the installation or setup, it is not the primary alias on my Microsoft account, if I use Outlook.live.com through a browser, it correctly shows '[email protected]' and the Gmail does not appear anywhere, and I thought that re-installing Outlook should wipe all of the previous settings on my desktop, shouldn't it?

The one thing that I thought of trying is if I right-click on the [email protected] mailbox folder in Outlook and select “Data File Properties…” (instead of Account Properties…) it brings up a dialog the has the [email protected] in a textbox and it appears will let me change it, but I am afraid that I might break it even worse by re-directing it to a non-existent PST/OST file rather than just changing it’s internal folder/file display name (which is what I want).

So, does anyone know how I can fix this?

Just an inspiration, what if you remove all your non-primary aliases and just leave the [email protected] as your primary alias. Then try creating and using a new Outlook profile via Control Panel > Mail > Show profile and re-adding your email account to check if the issue has any difference. If it could work fine, we could then add those non-primary aliases back.

In case anyone else ever runs into this same problem, I want to record here how I finally dealt with it.

Although I was never able to fix the literal problem I described above, I was able to (effectively) fix my problem, but only by creating a new Outlook profile. By creating a new profile named [email protected] and then setting that profile as my default profile, everything works as desired. The builtin profile (named "Outlook") is still messed up, but it doesn't appear to affect anything else and it seems that I never have to use it.