How to backup your Outlook 2019 / 2016 contacts and calendars to an Excel or personal folder (PST) file?

Version applicability: Outlook and Excel 2019, 2016; Office 365; Windows and macOS

Last updated: October 2019

Once a year, i typically consolidate a full list of all my Outlook contacts – both business and personal into a spreadsheet which i keep in a separate network storage.

In today’s tutorial, i will describe a very simple procedure that will allow you to save your Outlook 2016 contact persons list into an comma separated values (CSV) file, which you can edit using  Microsoft Excel or alternatively save backup your contacts  into a personal outlook data file (PST). Both are pretty similar but serve a bit different purposes.

Export your contacts to Excel CSV files

We’ll first learn how to save your address book contacts into an Excel CSV file, so you can backup them as needed. You could then edit the list as needed and then import and sync them into your Iphone or Android phones and into third party services like GMail, Yahoo Mail or even your MAC Icloud. Business users might also import their CSV files to other Outlook mailboxes served by Microsoft Exchange.

Here’s the process you should follow to backup your address book contacts:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook.
2. Hit File.
3. Select Open & Export.
4. Select Import/Export.
5. Select Export to a file.
6. Hit Next.
7. Now go ahead and select Comma Separated Values
8. Hit Next again.
9. Select your Contacts folder.
10. Select Next.
11. Provide a meaningful name to your contacts .csv file.
12. Hit Next and you are done.

Save contacts to a .pst file (Outlook Data file)

Sometimes, you might want to migrate your contact between different versions of Microsoft Outlook, or  import contacts from Outlook to the Microsoft Outlook.com web application. In this case, you might opt for exporting your Contacts people list to an Outlook Data file, commonly referred as .pst.

The process is quite similar to the one described  in the previous section. Note that in step 6 – you’ll need to pick Outlook data file to create a contacts .pst file.

Import your .pst file contacts into Excel (csv / xlsx / xls files)

If you already have a .pst file, you can import its contents into Microsoft Excel using Microsoft Outlook. Provided that your pst file contents are visible as  part of your Contacts folder in Outlook, then the process will be similar to the one we outlined in the previous section in this post.

Export your calendar to Excel

Using the same process outlined above, you are able to backup your calendars into Excel or PST files. Follow the steps outlined above, except that in step 9 instead of picking a Contacts folder you should pick a calendar – either personal or shared.

Uninstall Skype for Business 2019/ 365 / 2016 and Office Lync 2013

Last updated: December 2019

When we first wrote this post, Microsoft Office Lync was the “Skype equivalent” for corporate users. As part of the release of Microsoft Office 2016, Lync was rebranded as Skype for Business, and positioned  as the Microsoft instant messaging solution for corporate and enterprises.

Instant messaging is great for collaborating with your peers. However i am seeing more and more folks that call the quits on messaging at work and decide to uninstall or at least turn off the IM software on their computers.

In this post we’ll discuss the process for removing Lync 2013 and Skype for Business software from your Windows 7 or 10 PC.

Uninstall Lync 2013 on Windows

1. Open the Control panel and select Programs.
2. Click on Uninstall a program below programs and features.
3. Select Microsoft Office professional plus 2013 and click Change next to uninstall.

4. After the dialog box open, click Add or Remove programs and select Continue.
5. Search for Microsoft Lync and click on the drop down box next to it.
6. Change Run from my computer to Not Available and click Continue.

7. Wait till the Configuration progress ends.

Disable and Remove Skype for Business 365 / 2019

Skype for Business is integrated into Office 365, and doesn’t appear as an independent entry in the Programs and Features list. Therefore, the only feasible way to uninstall it would be to uninstall Office 365 altogether.

That said,  provided you do have the right permissions, you could as well disable Skype in a quite simple manner, so that even if installed, it won’t start automatically when logging on to Windows 7/10 or alternatively it would run only in the background and won’t interfere with your daily work.

Please proceed as following:

1. Open Skype for Business
2. Hit the Options menu at the right hand side of your upper toolbar.
3. Hover to the Personal tab
4. Uncheck the check boxes shown in the screenshot below:

5. Hit OK, you’re all set

Remove Skype for Business 2016

If you are running Office 2016, Skype for Business is installed as a standalone application, so the procedure is the same one as above.

1. In Windows 10, hit the Search Windows button.
2. Type Control Panel and hit Enter.
3. Hit Programs.
4. Hit Programs and Features.
5. Then highlight for the Skype entry in the installed program list.
6. Now hit Uninstall and follow the wizard steps.

How to get rid of the Skype chat history in Outlook.com messenger?

Recently, I had problems with deleting Skype chat message history stored in Outlook messenger. After a long research, looks like there are no options available to delete Skype chat history directly from Outlook messenger.  Instead, we need to clear the whole chat history in Skype itself. After doing so, the  The procedure is described below.

To delete chat history in Skype application:

•  Log into your Skype account (note that you might need to install Skype on your PC if it’s not already installed).
• Click on the Tools from the toolbar and select options.
• Click Privacy settings from the opened dialog box.

• You can find Clear History down the Keep History for and Select Clear History.

• Click Delete in the dialog box and Select Save.
• Now you won’t find chat conversation in Skype application and also in outlook messenger.

Note:

• We can delete specific messages on from the recent chat by right click and select Remove message.

Configuration settings to add Yahoo Mail to Outlook 365 ,2019, 2016

Last updated: September 2019

Tutorial applicability: Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013; Office 365 and Standard; Windows operating systems.

Here’s a question i got the other day from one reader, who was looking for the settings to add Yahoo to Outlook 365 / 2019:

“I am a long time user of Microsoft Outlook for managing my business email. As i do own an account at Yahoo Mail , i thought of asking you guys whether you could provide a guide to help me configure Outlook so i can send and receive my Yahoo email. Can Yahoo even be used on Outlook? If so, how can i connect them? Thanks :-)”

Sure. In this post we’ll explain the required settings that you can use to configure Microsoft Outlook to easily access your Yahoo mailbox. We’ll use version 2016 for simplicity, but the content is relevant also if you decided to upgrade to Office 2019 / 365.

Note that this tutorial is not only relevant for the .com Yahoo Mail but also to Yahoo.co.uk and other regional sites.

Configuring Outlook for Yahoo Mail access

1. Start by opening Outlook , then hit File in the task bar and select Add Account.
2. Click on the Manual setup or additional server type and select Next.
3. In Choose service, select POP or IMAP and click Next.
4. Enter Name and Email address in the given blank space.
5. In the Server information, set Account Settings as IMAP.
6. Next is to input the Yahoo mail server settings. Under  Incoming Mail Server set: imap.mail.yahoo.com.
7. Under  Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) set: Type smtp.mail.yahoo.com .
8. Next, enter your Yahoo Account password in the Logon Information section.
9. Go to the Outgoing Server tab and  check the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication box and select use same settings as my incoming mail ser
10. Now go ahead, and hit More Settings … select Advanced.
11. Enter 993 in Incoming server (IMAP) and select SSL/TLS in Encrypted connection.
12. Enter 465 in outgoing server (SMTP) and select SSL/TLS in Encrypted connection.
13. ver.
14. Now hit OK and select Next in the Add Account dialog box.
15. At this point Outlook will test out your account to ensure your configuration is valid the the account was added. If for some reason it doesn’t, all you’ll need to do to manually trigger the verification process is hit the Test Account settings button.
16. Congrats! you have added your Yahoo account in Outlook.

Yahoo Mail Outlook settings

The screenshots below summarizes the most up-to-date recommended configuration settings for YMail on Outlook 365/2019/2016:

POP and IMAP:

Outgoing Server:

Advanced settings:

Adding GMail to Outlook 2019/2016

If you need to configure GMail for Outlook 2016/ 2019 we definitely recommend that you’ll look into our tutorial on the suggested Gmail configuration settings for Outlook 2016.

Next steps

• Got a related question? Look into our guide on how to get your questions answered.

Outlook Forms: How to create fillable forms in Microsoft Office 2016 / 2019?

Note: This post content is applicable to Office 2019,2016, 2013, 2010; desktop and Office 365 versions; Windows 10, 8 and 7;

Post updated on: December 2019

Here’s a question from Deanne:

I work in the Retail industry. I use Outlook in order to manage my contact information. I am quite fond of Outlook as my contact manager, but clearly i need to be able to enhance the basic contact form capabilities. My requirement is to be able to add several fields that will allow me to store the web addresses of the social media profiles of each of my contacts. So long story short, I guess i have a couple questions here: First, how to make the menu item buttons that will allow me to interact with Outlook forms and second: how to actually go ahead and create or modify my Contact form. Any hints are super appreciated. Thanks!

In this post, we’ll teach you how you can easily create custom fillable user forms in Microsoft Outlook. We’ll customize the Contact form as an example, however the process is fully applicable for emails, tasks, task requests, appointment invitations, journal entries and so forth. In addition we have additional tutorials for form development in Excel workbooks and Word custom fillable forms.

OK.. let’s get started.

Working with forms in Outlook is not particularly difficult. Outlook ships several predefined templates, and the basic idea is to customize those templates according to your needs.

As mentioned, In this Outlook forms examples tutorial we’ll focus specifically you how to customize the Contacts form. For convenience, we’ll assume that you’ll want to manage the following social media information for your contact people:

• LinkedIn profile
• Twitter profile
• Facebook profile
• Facebook Group

Here’s how our custom Outlook userform will look like:

Setting up the Developer tab

As noted by the reader above, before we get started with our custom Outlook forms, we need to enable the so-called Developer tab. This will allow us to access the Outlook capabilities we need in order to develop our own forms.

Here’s how to do it:

1. First off,  go ahead and open Microsoft Outlook.
   
2. Now right click the Ribbon and select Customize Ribbon.

3. Click on the Developer Check box and select OK.

4. You’ll now notice the newly added Developer tab in your Ribbon.

Create Outlook Forms

Microsoft Outlook ships a nice collection of forms related to the main Outlook objects that you can select and jump-start your form development process. That’s very useful because we don’t want to re-invent the wheel. We’ll just go ahead and extend the already existing Contact form stored in your standard forms library.

Step 1: Open your existing form

1. On your Outlook Ribbon, go ahead and hit the Developer menu.
   
2. Now go ahead and hit Design a form.
3. In the Look In box field ensure that Standard Forms library is selected.
4. Select the Contact form.
5. Hit Open.
6. Now we’ll go ahead and modify the existing Contact form.
7. You”ll notice that our form was opened in Design View.
8. In the next step, we are going to add several new custom fields to hold our Contact Social Media information.

Step 2: Add custom Form fields

In this step, we’ll go ahead and create custom form fields (columns0 for the Social Media information.

• In your Ribbon Tools group, hit the Field Chooser button.
• This dialog will open up.At the bottom of the Field Chooser dialog, hit New.

• Create your first new Column, call it LinkedIn, choose Type = Text and Format = Text, as shown below.

• Now repeat the process above for the next 3 fields: Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Group.
• You’ll notice your new fields in the User defined fields in folder section as shown below:

Step 3: Add a custom Form page

In this step we’ll add a custom page to the Contact Form. In that page we’ll store the Social Media profile fields.

1. Now go ahead and hit the (P.2) tab next to the General as shown below.

2. Now from the Ribbon, hit the Page button and select Rename Page.

3. Enter Social Media in the Page Name field and hit OK.
4. Now drag the four fields from the Field Choose to your Social Media Page and position them as shown below:

5. Note: In order to align your custom fields, just select them (ensure you hit the CTRL button as you select them all), then make a right click and hit Align, then select the alignment direction.
6. As part of your form development you should check your work periodically. The best way to do that is by hitting the Run this Form button. This will show you how your work will look to the user.

Step 4: Save your Outlook form

As you have seen before, your modified Contact form is still in Design Mode. If you want to start using it you should publish it to your Form library. According to your permissions, you might be able to make it available for your own usage or allow other colleague in your organization to use it as well.

1. From your Ribbon, hit the Publish button.
2. Select Publish Form As..
3. Under Display Name type ContactFormSocial
4. Hit Publish.

Advanced User Note: Your form will be saved as an .oft file in the AppData directory of your home directory:: \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates.

Step 5: Try out your new form

We are almost there. Now it is time to go ahead and give our work a try.

1. Open your Contacts tab in Outlook.
2. Hit New Items.
3. Hit Custom Forms.
4. Select your ContactFormSocial entry.
5. Hit the Social Media button in the Ribbon (you just added it in the previous step ;-))
6. Voila’ – done!

Step 6: Use your new form by default

If you are satisfied with the result of your work, you can set your new form as the default Contact form in Microsoft Outlook. Do this only after you have followed the entire tutorial, as this step is irrelevant otherwise.

Proceed as following:

1. Navigate to the Contact tab.
2. Highlight your Contacts library folder (by default it is named Contacts).
3. Right Click and select Properties.
4. In the General tab, select your form name (in our case ContactFormSocial) in the When posting to the folder field.
5. Hit OK.

Outlook meeting form templates

If you are looking for a more in-depth tutorial, make sure you visit this detailed example of an email and appointment template design for Outlook (applicable to both Windows and macOSX)

Find my Outlook templates

A couple of readers had some trouble finding the storage location of their custom user forms for Outlook.

By default, the location is under your user account. In Windows 10 /8 or 7, it’s therefore going to probably be: C\:users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates.

Outlook: reset and change passwords in Office 2019 / 365 / 2016

Last updated: December 2019

Securing your email account is a critical measure needed to safeguard your online privacy. Defining a strong password and storing it in a password keeping tool is a good first step. It is recommended, however, to proactively change your password periodically to ensure your account stays protected.

This post explains how you can easily reset your Outlook password in Microsoft Office 2016 / 365 /2019. For simplicity, this tutorial assumes that you are using Outlook.com as your mail provider. That said, the process is almost fully  applicable when using Yahoo, GMail or the account provided you by your internet provider ).

We’ll start by showing how you can update your Outlook.com settings, and then actually update your desktop edition of Outlook 365 (2019/2016).

Update your Outlook.com password

• Log into your Microsoft / Outlook.com / Hotmail Account, Click on Settings on the top right and select Options.

• On Managing your account, hit  Account details.

• From the opened new tab select Security & Privacy.
• Click Change your password.
• Enter Current password, New password and retype new password respectively on the space provided.
• Click Save to change to your new password.

Note: this process can be executed not only on your PC, but also for your cellular phone (be it Iphone or Android)  as well as tablets (iPads, Android, Fire).

Change your password in Outlook 2019 / 2016 /365

Our next step will be the configure the desktop edition of Outlook (the one installed on your personal computer) to work with the modified password.

1. From your desktop or laptop computer, open Microsoft Outlook.
2. Now go ahead and hit File and then select Account settings.
3. In the Account settings dialog box, navigate to the E-mail tab.
4. Now go ahead and select your email account.This could be GMail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail or any other POP/ IMAP account configured on your Outlook.
5. Now hit Change.

6. Under Change Settings, enter your new password. As a rule, always use a “strong” password that contains both upper and lower case letters, signs and numbers and is longer than 8 characters. It’s important that you’ll keep your password secure using password keeping software.
7. Click Next to run the test run, and close it.
8. Your password will be changed.

Microsoft Exchange users

Important Note: The procedure we outlined above won’t work when accessing your email through an Exchange Server. In this case, your Windows domain credentials (the ones you use in order to login to your computer) are used to control access to your email. You can set a password to your Offlline folders though.

Update Outlook passwords (macOS)

If you are using Office for macOS, you are also able to modify your Outlook mailbox password settings. We’ll assume that you are using Outlook.com or Gmail and that you have already updated your new settings online, and now it is time to allow your desktop email client to access the inbox.

Proceed as following:

1. Open Outlook for macOS.
2. From the upper toolbar, hit Outlook.
3. Now go ahead and hit Preferences and select Accounts (in the Personal Settings area).
4. In the left hand side, you’ll notice the email accounts accessible from Outlook. Highlight the one you would like to modify (might be IMAP or POP).
5. Under Server Information, go ahead an update your password. This should be identhical to the one you set in your Outlook.com/Gmail/Yahoo inbox. AAs previously indicated, ensure that you pick a strong password, including Capitalized characters, numbers and symbols.
6. Now go ahead and close the dialog.
7. Navigate to the inbox and verify that you have access to the latest email.

That’s it

Change your Outlook data file password (Windows)

We often recommend to periodically archive your Outlook emails for offline usage using the so called Outlook Data Files (PST files). By leveraging PST files, we are able to quickly access our archived items for further reference or make periodic backups as needed.

One more important topic, which is often overlooked by Outlook users, is the fact that Outlook data files have to be secured as well.

Here’s how we manage the password settings of our PST files.

1. First off, go ahead an login to Outlook.
2. Hit File, then select the Info Tab.
3. Under Account Information, hit the Accounts Setting button.
4. Then select Account Settings and go to the Data Files tab
5. You’ll then notice the list of Data Files that are available to your Microsoft Outlook client.
6. Highlight your data file. Note: You might have one or more Archive folders. Make sure to highlight the correct one.
7. Now hit on Settings.
8. Now go ahead and hit Change Password.
9. Type your old password to the Data file, leave it blank if you had no password set before.
10. Now type your new password twice. Make sure to backup your new password in a secure place.
11. Hit OK.
12. Starting now, Outlook will prompt you for a password whenever trying to access your Offline Data File.
13. It’s highlight recommended to execute this process periodically to ensure your data files stay secure.

Note: You might have more than one data files in your PC. Make sure to secure each of the files with a password.

How to automatically receive email in Outlook 2013?

Here’s a note we received from Xavier:

I am using Outlook 2013 to read my Hotmail. The thing is that by default, Outlook refreshes my inbox every hour or so. Is there a way to make Outlook automatically refresh every 5 minutes or less?

Thanks Xavier for this question. As a matter of fact you can configure Outlook 2013 send / receive mechanism to fire off every few minutes as you might need. Here’s how:

• Open Outlook 2013 and ensure that you are in the Mail tab.
• From the upper menu, select Send/Receive.
• Select Send / Receive groups and hit Define a Send /Receive group.
• Set the required time interval as show below:

• Ensure the interval is not too short or you’ll end up with duplicated messages in your mailbox.
• Hit Close, and you’ll be all set.

Recommended steps

How to make a .pst file in Microsoft Outlook 2013?

Last updated:October 2019

The other day, a friend  using Outlook 2013 as his email client, was inquiring about storing  his personal data  in offline Outlook personal folders. We typically refer to these files as PST files. They are useful for storing all correspondence related to a particular subject in a separate folder offline, so searching and retrieval when offline will be easy.

Here’s how you create Outlook data files (pst) in Microsoft Outlook 2013. Using newer Outlook version? Head over to this guide.

• Launch Microsoft Outlook 2013.
• Under Home tab, select New Items.
• Select More Items in the drop down and choose Outlook Data File.

• Browse the location where you would like to store the pst file.
• Enter a name for the file and click on OK.

TIPS :

• To prevent any loss of your email backup, it is a very good practice to backup your PST files to an external device or network folder once a month or a quarter.
• For increased security you might want to password protect your PST file.
• You are free to use as many PST files as needed. Having multiple PST files will allow you to back and store email related to specific people, projects or time frame. Splitting your PST to manageable sizes also lower the risk of data loss due to PST corruption.I typically manage a PST file for every calendar year. Once a year a create a new PST file using the process outlined above, and make the create data file as default.
• You can also create sub-folders under the existing Outlook file, by selecting New Folder in the drop down obtained by right clicking on the psd file in Outlook.

Hope it helps 😉

How to modify your Hotmail password in Windows, Android phone, iPhone or iPad?

Applicable to: Outlook.com on Windows (7,8,10), Android and IOS computers, as well as Apple Mail and other 3rd party mail apps on IOS.

Last update: October 2019

This thread started as a question from one of our readers about how to change his Hotmail / Outlook.com / Microsoft Mail password across multiple devices he owns. The original question is shown below:

I would like to change the Hotmail password in my computer. I also own a nice Galaxy Android phone which runs the Outlook.com application. Could you provide some information about how can i modify my account login info without losing access to my inbox, which is critical for me.

Thanks for the question.

Few years ago, Microsoft re-branded their Hotmail web email service and introduced Outlook.com.Still many of us stick to our beloved Hotmail email address, when using Outlook.com.

In this post we’ll answer the question from our reader, as well as provide additional processes to reset your Hotmail login info in Windows and iOS devices. This is particularly important due to increasing amount of attempts to hijack 3rd party web email accounts. It’s a good practice to modify your web email credentials every couple months.

Important Note for Android users: As of February 2019, The Outlook.com app on mobile still doesn’t support Microsoft account login password modification and resets. Hence you should first modify your credentials from the Outlook.com site which you can easily access from your device browser (Edge, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari). The entire process is detailed in the next section.

Change your Hotmail password

In this section we’ll learn  how you can replace your Microsoft credentials.

Notes:

Please be aware that the Microsoft account password is needed not only for Hotmail, but also for Skype,  Skype for Business, Microsoft Office 365 online and other Microsoft web services.

If this is your first attempt to modify your access credentials, good chances that Microsoft will require to verify your identity by sending a security code to additional mailboxes (by email) or cellular phones (by SMS) that you have provided during your account setup process.

First off, from your favorite web browser, login to the Outlook.com website and access your mailbox.

Then, on the right hand side, hit your user icon.

Next hit Edit Profile.

Now, in the Your Info area, hit Change password.

Next enter your current credentials and your new ones as shown below.

Hit Save.

Back in your mailbox you’ll receive a new incoming message confirming your credentials modification.

What if i forgot my Hotmail login or password

A couple of readers have asked on what should they do in case that they simply don’t remember their Hotmail login credentials.

In that case, you’ll need to reset your password from the Outlook.com login page.

Outlook.com password change on Android

After you modify your password to a new one, proceed as following:

1. On your Android desktop hit the Outlook.com icon
2. You’ll be prompted to enter your new password.
3. Once you do, hit on Sign In and start using Outlook.

Change password for Outlook on IOS (iPhone and iPad, Apple watch devices)

The way to modify your Outlook.com password for IOS depends in which app you’ll be using for accessing your Outlook email.

When using Outlook:

1. On your iPad or iPhone hit the Microsoft Outlook icon.
2. If prompted, change your password.
3. Start using Outlook as usual!

When using the default Mail application:

1. Access the default Apple Mail application.
2. Go to your Outlook.com mailbox.
3. The mailbox will sync up automatically, and you shouldn’t be prompted to change your login details.

Modify Hotmail app password on Iphone, Ipad and Android

First off, if you are still running the legacy Hotmail  app for some reason, consider upgrading, as Outlook.com has much better usability and features. If you opt to continue using your Hotmail app, follow the steps below to change your password in Android phones and Apple devices.

Android Phones :

• Open your email app and press the Menu button and select More.

• Choose Account Settings.

• Then, choose Incoming Settings from the list of options.

• Enter your new password in the Password field and click on Next.

iPods, iPhones and iPads :

• Open Settings from the list of icons in the Home.
• Search for Mail, Contacts, Calendars and tap on it.
• The accounts that are accessed via the devices are listed. Choose Hotmail from the list.

• Touch Account in the page that opens.

• Modify the password in the Password field and press Done.

Hope it helps!

Where to find Scanpst.exe file in Outlook 2010?

Here’s a question from one of our readers,

My Outlook profile file (.pst) is corrupted, and I read somewhere that I can scan and repair it using scanpst.exe tool. However I can’t find it in Microsoft Outlook 2010. Where do I look for it?

Thanks for the question. As you have rightly said, the Scanpst.exe scans your corrupted Outlook profile and tries to repair it.

While Scanpst.exe does ship by default with Outlook 2010, it cannot be accessed from within Outlook. In fact, you cannot even run this utility without closing Outlook.

Once you’ve completely exited Outlook, open My Computer and go to Files\Microsoft Office\Office14, and you will find Scanpst.exe there.