Reinstalling Microsoft Outlook After .pst Error

​This article covers the topic of reinstalling Microsoft Outlook after receiving the .pst file error.
You have installed Microsoft Outlook, either 2003, 2007, 2010, or newer and something went wrong after you have been using it for years. Nothing major enough to do an OSRI, Operating System reinstall, but perhaps a Microsoft product was being typical Microsoft and your copy of Outlook had to be removed and reinstalled.
So you uninstall it and then clean out all remaining files, you delete the files in the <User> Appdata folder and then deleted the Outlook folder in the <User> Documents. You then run a cleaner to ensure all fragments of Outlook are removed in hopes of removing the error that caused you to uninstall the program.
So now you reinstall Outlook and once its installed you click to open it but NNNOOOO! its looking for the former .pst folder. The .pst folder is the folder that was created when you first installed Outlook that stored your user information. There are several .pst folders, one is in your <User> name Documents folder and some are in the <User> appdata folder. But even if you leave these fodlers intact you may still encounter the error that Outlook can’t find the .pst data folder. It is totally annoying and you will not find a direct answer on Microsoft’s website or most forums. What you will find is a bunch of useless ramblings against Microsoft and crying about how the folder is structured. It drove me crazy that not one forum I read and not one post on Microsoft had the answer. So being a brave IT dude I decided to explore and test. What I’m about to tell you WILL fix the problem but you must follow these steps, regardless of the threats that you see on your screen from Microsoft.

1. Reinstall Microsoft Outlook.
2. Open Outlook.
3. Click >CANCEL< on all error messages and “Can’t find .pst data file” messages. Just don’t bother click cancel.
4. If you did #3 above something wonderful happened. In your >CONTROL PANEL< an Outlook Mail Icon was created. So guess where we are going.
5. Open the >CONTROL PANEL< NOT the >SETTINGS< in Windows 10 but the old >CONTROL PANEL<
6. Make sure >VIEW BY< in the upper right hand corner is set to >LARGE ICONS<
7. Look for >MAIL< everything is in alphabetic order, click to open that icon.
8. Look at the 3rd entry >PROFILES< Don’t mess with the top two, waste of time.
9. Click >SHOW PROFILES<
10. Make sure “OUTLOOK” is highlighted
11. Click >DELETE<
12. Confirm etc…etc…etc…Close all windows.
13. Open Outlook and you will now be prompted to create a profile and set up mail accounts.

One last though, the above is NOT to be used in an attempt to restore user data .pst files. The above will delete, remove and destroy all precious user data .pst files. The above method will create all new profiles and all new .pst files. DO NOT use this method if you are attempting to restore existing user data .pst files.