If you’re using Outlook 2011 on your Mac, there will be times when you need to delete an old or unused email account. Here’s how to do it.
The other day I showed you how to add Windows Live Mail via POP3 to Outlook Mac 2011. Now that you know how to add an account, what about removing one?
First, launch Outlook Mac 2011. From the toolbar click Outlook >> Preferences.
Outlook Preferences opens. In the Personal Settings column click on Accounts.
The Accounts screen comes up. This will list each of the email accounts you have set up in Outlook. Here I just have one, but highlight the one you want to delete in the left panel. Then at the bottom click the minus button to deleted the selected account.
If you want to save your emails, or delete them, click the Advanced button on the Accounts screen.
Then select if you want to have your emails deleted from the server after a certain amount of time or not at all.
After deciding on what to do with your existing emails click Delete on the verification message.
After that you’re brought to the Add an Account screen. That’s all there is to it. Now you can add your new email address or just close out of this screen.
24 Comments
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don
Hmm, this is pretty lame. The most common use case for deleting an account is because the account is gone! I want to keep my mail but delete the account so that send/receive doesn’t keep getting errors. There is nothing on the server because I’ve switched service providers and the old one isn’t going to do me a favor and keep my mail around. Now, send/receive is poisoned forever. The best I can do is tell outlook to not get mail automatically for the dead accounts. Please provide another way to keep my mail so I can delete the account. Thanks.
Brian Burgess
Before you delete your account, click advanced, and check Leave a copy…
Nick Arroyo
Tried this and does not work. The issue is that when in go thru preferences or tools on outlook the program freezes and I cant do anything with my email accounts. On preferences I cant even see my gmail account. In tools I can see it but cant access it. Any suggestions.
Thanks,
Nick
Juan
Has anyone been able to solve this problem?
I already have my account set to “Leave a copy of each message on server”. When I click on the minus sign ( – ) to delete the account, I do not get a window with Password, Incoming server, etc. I get a pop up with this message:
“All items in this account will be removed from your computer. If you have copies of messages or other items on the mail server, the copies will not be affected.“
This pop up has two buttons: Cancel and Delete.
I do not want to delete the items related to this account (e-mail messages, contact) from my computer. How do I get around this?
I’m running Outlook for Mac 2011 version 14.7.7 on High Sierra.
Don
Thanks for the quick response. Hmm. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something. Are you saying that if I click the check box to leave a copy “ON THE SERVER” it will actually leave a copy on my mac in Outlook after deleting the account in outlook? My understanding is that checkbox just tells outlook which emails to delete on the service provider’s system after it downloads mail. I’ve always had that checkbox checked and set to 7 days so that I could check email on the web as well a on my mac for a short while after it was delivered. As far as I know that checkbox has nothing to do with what mail is kept in outlook locally. I’m afraid to try this or lose all my email since it’s not consistent with what I believe that checkbox is used for.
nicky
I would also appreciate an answer to the above question.
Dublin
I would also like to hear your solution to the issue above. My email server has been switched and I am now getting my emails from a new server. I need to delete the old email account that is constantly looking for the old server to get my emails. Unfortunately, when I highlight the account and click on the minus symbol outlook throws an error and crashes while it is trying to delete the account. Any suggestions?
Andreas
Did you solve this issue? I’m also experiencing hangs and crashes when trying to delete an account.
Rui
I was to stupid not to inform my self before I’ve deleted the account… I thought it would only stop to sync. I didn’t “click advanced, and check Leave a copy”. How can I recover my mails?!!! Is it possible?
I haven’t received the box you describe “Are you sure you want to delete…”
It was a gmail account with SMTP…
Please help!
Thanks
Scott
I deleted my account in preferences, but when I click the outlook icon, it still brings up my old mail account. how do i get rid of the old stuff? Thanks
Scott
Dolores
Did your query get solved? I still see the unwanted account in the from field. thanks, dolores.
diwnload scapst.exe
It happens with everyone that their Outlook PST file data sometimes become inaccessible due to various reasons and this is really panic and irritating situation for users and to overcome this problem I make use of Scapstexe. But lastly while i make of third party tool it help me out.
Mujtaba
hi Brain,
thanks a lot, it saved my time.
Jean
I was worried about losing all the emails as well, but went ahead and tried this (“Keep on server” in the Advanced settings) since I didn’t have too many emails in that account.
I’m happy to report that Outlook did indeed keep all the email from the deleted account.
Luis
Why don’t you all just create a PST file to backup your email?
Kristin
I just wanted to say thanks for posting this guide. It was better than the one put out by Microsoft as I was unable to find a version for Mac. This worked great and was something I didn’t want to guess at. Thanks!
Dawn
I’m not even sure how to launch Outlook and find the preferences
Roger
Thanks for this, I added my gmail account to the outlook account so that I didn’t need to change between email software. It wasn’t as useful as I had hoped so I want to stop outlook getting the gmail stuff. when I try to remove the gmail through the processes listed above only part of the accounts window show and the gmail account can’t be seen.
Eg I only see “advan” of the advanced button & can’t resize the window. Any thoughts>
mas212
How to delete account outlook in the mac air ??
Y
thank you for this. will doing this also delete the archived files in outlook? i have manually migrated emails into a new folder under ‘my computer’ on the left hand side in outlook as a first step. i now want to remove the account but leave the archived emails for this account.. please advise. i will be including a new account in the outlook going forward.
Stephen Klinger
My Outlook for Mac 2011 keeps trying to delete everything in my in box. It started after I hit some random key on my keyboard by accident. Outlook preferences is grayed out and I can’t access it. Every time I see the delete dialogue box I hit stop and it temporarily does that but won’t close the box. I have tried force quit and restart numerous times, but the same thing happens each time I try to do anything in Outlook. And now, when I try to send a new message, I can’t get out of that box or close it, but it will send it. I notice that “Contact Groups” rather than ‘New Message” is highlighted in the menu, but it won’t let me change that either. I am having to force quit every time just to be able to do anything in Outlook.
Steve Krause
Well, if you did a “Command+A” then perhaps you deleted the inbox.
Can you just go into the Deleted items and move it back into your inbox? Not elegant but might be a simple fix once your mail is all deleted. ;)
Stephen Klinger
Thanks for your response. Although the dialogue box showed it was deleting several thousand emaIls from my main account and a sub-account, all the emails stil appear to be in the two in-boxes now that it is finished. All the functions returned when instead of hitting STOP I just let it continue to “delete.” So no need to drag anything back from the trash. One more strange phenomenon: I had a second sub-account, which now has twice as many messages, including many in duplicate. Weird, but everything seems to be working as usual now.
Steven Booth Songstad
Nope, that is not the reason I am trying to delete the account. If I could delete the account the proper way I would not be asking. The problem is that when I try to delete an account, per the method prescribed in Outlook, Outlook freezes, becomes non responsive and does nothing. SO the question is how to Manually Delete an Email Account when Outlook is being onery and uncooperative on my Mac.