A word of warning
As promised a write-up on how to edit the POP3 accounts in Outlook 97. But before we get to the goods a notice. First I must warn you that there are basically two types of Outlook 97. There is the original one (which I’ll refer to as the “gold” version) and there is one with Service Pack 1 or higher, or the Internet Mail Enhancement Pack (which is s seperate download, but later also included in SP1). There is a very important difference between these two versions. Outlook 97 gold only supports one (1) POP3 account. You can’t add more! The SP1 version allows you to add mor then 1.
Another thing you should know is that I’ve never been able o find out how to add a new POP3 account to Outlook 97 (either version). I can edit the settings of an existing account, but if I add all the right registry keys, Outlook for some reason won’t recognize the account. So in this article, only stuff on how to read an account and edit it.
Services
Unlike in Outlook Express, Outlook 97 installs each POP3 as a seperate service. A service, in this case, is a sort of plug-in for Outlook 97. Other services include Personal Folders and Exchange Server Mail. Because a POP3 account is considered a service it’s layout is much more complex. To make things even more interesting, Outlook 97 stores it’s settings on WinNT in a different key then on Win9x. In WinNT the Outlook root key is Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem while on Win9x it’s at Software\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem. Both are under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Fortunatly, after that everything is the same.
Profiles
Then we find another difference from Outlook Express. Outlook supports profiles. Meaning you can have a profile for at home and one for in the office (for example). Each profile has it’s own services. So if you want to search through all the POP3 accounts, you’ll need to search all the profiles. Lucky for us, profiles aren’t that complicated. Under the registry key mentioned above there is a key called profiles and underneath that key are keys whose name matches the name of the profiles. Most of the time there will be only one profile and it will be called “Outlook”.
If you want to know the default profile, there’s a string value with the name “DefaultProfile” in the profiles key. It’s value is the name of the default profile, which also corresponds to the name of the registry key.
The settings
Now the fun begins. Underneath the profile key there are a bunch (or a whole damn lot) of keys with GUID names. Their names mean nothing at all! The GUIDs can be anything for as far as I know. If you want to find a POP3 account you’ll need to enumerate all the keys and see if they have an entry with the name “001e3d0b” (this name is also a GUID, just a shorter function, but it does mean something!). This should be a string value and it’s value is the name of an Outlook 97 service. In the case of a POP3 account this value should be “MailServiceEntry”. If you find a key, with this entry with the value, you’ve found a POP3 account!.
If it is a POP3 account you can also find the following settings:
- 001e3001: The name of the account as it’s shown in Outlook 97.
- 001e6600: The POP3 server name.
- 001e6606: The POP3 username.
- 001e6611: The SMTP server name.
- 001e6605: The e-mail address this accounts uses for sending.
- 001e6607: The display name of the mail account (who the mail is from).
- 00036601: The connection type. This is a binary value with a size of 4 (basically a DWORD). A value of 1 means connect like Internet Explorer connects, 2 means using a dial-up connection and 0 or anything else means LAN connection.
- 001e6631: If the connection type is 2, this contains the name of the dial-up connection to use.
- 01023d01: This is the Template GUID (more on this below).
- 01023d02: This is the MailEntry GUID (more on this below).
All of these are string values, wiht the exception of the 001e6631 value, which is a 4 byte binary value (not a DWORD value!!) and 01023d01 and 01023d02 which are 16 byte binary values.
Related GUIDs
As stated above you’ll also find a Template GUID and a MailEntry GUID.
If you are just changing some POP3 values, these are not interesting, if you want to add an account they are. However, since we can’t add new accounts to Outlook 97 they are not interesting (but they will be in Outlook 98). Basically they refer to another key underneath the profiles key which has some info required for the Internet Mail Service. Have a look at them if you’re interested.
Even when adding new accounts they don’t contain settings we’ll change, they just need to be present and filled with the correct information.
In closing
Well, this should be enough for you to change POP3 accounts in Outlook 97. If someone finds a way to add new accounts AND have Outlook 97 recognize the new accounts let me know, I’m interested.
Next up: Outlook 98.
[Now playing: Pantera - Planet caravan]