Feeding two accounts into one PST file in Outlook

My old dev PC crashed and I had to get a new box. One problem when reinstalling everything again: I have Office 365 and thus Outlook 2019 locally on my PC. In my previous setup, I had my two e-mail accounts both being checked with POP and storing their e-mails into one, central .PST file. And I liked that setup.

Now after reinstalling, I was able to quickly get my two e-mail accounts set up again - but now, Outlook insists on having two separate "worlds" - each account is a separate "subfolder" (labelled with the e-mail address) in Outlook, it now uses IMAP (which is fine by me), and also both accounts store their e-mails locally into separate *.ost files in a folder I had no option of choosing.

Is there any way I could:

• at least change the location of those *.ost files? I don't like where Outlook defaults to ... but I can't find the "Change Location" button that used to be present on the account setting dialog anymore...
• ideally setup the two e-mail accounts to feed into one single, common set of folders, and into one common .pst file again?

Setting up Outlook has become easier - no question - but it also lacks the flexibility and configurability I used to like as a power user .... any way to get that power back??

Solution 1:

For your first question:

at least change the location of those *.ost files?

According to your description, I notice that you have configured an IMAP account. It is recommended that you could try to modify the registry to modify the location of .ost files.

For specific steps, please refer to:

1. Select Start, select Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then select OK;

2. Locate and then select the registry subkey:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Outlook;
   
    (Note: The xx.0 placeholder represents your version of Office (16.0 = Office 2016, Office 365 and Office 2019, 15.0 = Office 2013));
   

3. Right-click Outlook, select New, and then select "Expandable String Value"

4. Type ForcePSTPath, and then press Enter

5. Right-click ForcePSTPath and then select "Modify"

6. In the "Value" data box, type the full path of where you want to store the .ost file (such as D:\MyOST), and then select "OK"

7. On the File menu, select Exit to exit the Registry Editor

8. Control Panel > Mail > Show Profiles… > Add… > type a name for the new profile > Choose Manual setup or additional server types and configure your IMAP account

9. Back to Mail window, choose Prompt for a profile to be used;

10. Open Outlook and choose the new profile.

(It should be noted that if you modify the registry by mistake, serious problems may occur. Please back up the registry before operation.)

Solution 2:

Combining Accounts into one PST file still works (for PST, not Exchange).

Once the data files have been established, you cannot change where the email goes except to make a new PST file that points email where you want and then import email to the new file.

I have the newest Outlook here and the option to point email to a specific data file still exists. I use this to create a file with 3 accounts going to it.

Here is a screen shot that shows the major points. This is taken from Control Panel, Mail.

Most importantly: I use the Manual Account setup, never the Wizard. All the functionality we have been used to remains.