Cannot open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your offline folder file.

Cannot open your default email folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your offline folder file.

Well, that isn’t nice.

I did get this error message when I was trying to connect to a customers Exchange Server. I had all that I needed, an AD account, and Exchange account, a dedicated Mail profile set up. And everything worked flawlessly using their Outlook Web Access. But when I tried to connect my laptop with Outlook 2007 to their Exchange Server on the LAN I did get this error message:

Cannot open your default e-mail folders.
You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile
before you can synchronize your folders with your offline folder file.

Ok.

Here is the deal.

Since my laptop is not a member in their AD(it is a member in another AD), my default (other AD) credentials are passed to my customer’s Exchange Server. That will not work.

So here’s how to fix that.

In short, you need to tell the MAPI profile to prompt for your credentials, so that you get authorized by the Exchange Server properly.

Go to Control Panel -> (View 32-bit Control Panel items, if you are on 64bit) -> Mail

Got to your profile that is suppose to connect to this customers Exchange Server and select “Always prompt for logon credentials”.

Now, when you start Outlook you will have to enter your domain\Username credentials and password.

Here are the steps:

Start the Control Panel Mail applet

1. Start the Control Panel Mail applet

Select the MAPI profile and click properties

2. Select the MAPI profile and click properties.

Click on E-mail accounts

3. Click on E-mail Accounts.

Select the Exchange Server account and click on Change

4. Select the Exchange Server account and click on Change.

Click on More Settings

5. Click on More Settings.

Select the Security tab and check the Always prompt for logon credentials

6. Select the Security tab and check the Always prompt for logon credentials.

Done. That should do it.

52 thoughts to “Cannot open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your offline folder file.”

  1. Hi,
    Thanks for the info share on this page. I have exact problem but the solution given doesn’t work for me.
    My laptop is non domain. I however, get my username resolved without doing any trick but when I start my outlook I get this error you have mentioned on top of this page. I have tried too many options to overcome this issue but failed.
    I will be grateful if you please help me to get rid of this error message in order to work properly.
    Thanks in advance, Amerzd

  2. I’ve got the same issue and this didn’t fix it for me either; Having done this, it now asks for the credentials even when editing the settings, and it seems to validate them.

  3. Hi Mathew

    Pl. go to the folder where your offline folder is saved locally.

    Most propably it will be in the Documents and SettingsAdministratorLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook*.ost

    Delete all existing offline folders keep only *.pst files. then configure newly the mailbox.

    CENT % it will works….

  4. well, that was a real trip to “Pen Island”… man, thanks for the tip – can you then take the tick out the box once its connected? I don’t want my users to be prompted each time – they will winge

  5. @estate, well I don’t have this setup anymore, so I can’t confirm. But my guess is that they will have to be prompted because they are connecting to a “foreign” AD.

  6. Hello, I got the error that the same but your solution is not work. in my case old technical setup the user in the exchange system and they can’t implement to all user and resign for my company. So I have to continue the process. for the new user that I setup everything is ok but the existing that they setup is not. I don’t know why. anyone can help me about the exactly answer i want to know about the cause of problem is form the server or the clients or some configuration. thank you

  7. Great. After 1.5 days suffering, I resolve it by the tips of check “always prompt for logon credential”. Blame several IT guys. The windows credential management have “problems”…..!

  8. @Jayaraman Worked perfectly! Just have to delete all *ost files, and recreate the exchange settings.

  9. I as well had no luck fixing the problem via the methods listed here or elsewhere. After some tooling around with it a bit I found an obscure issue that causes the same error message. If you have more than one Exchange server for your company (IE east.company.com and west.company.com), you may want to check the Server Setting to ensure you are connecting to your “default” Exchange server. I found that on a replacement laptop, a “west.company.com” user was setup to connect to the “east.company.com” Exchange server. It appears that the error message may also refer to connecting to your “primary exchange server” and synchronizing prior to connecting to the secondary Exchange server (which in this case should not have happened anyways.)

  10. Thx for ur information, but outlook workin is very slow and not show sentiems files, and other files…. pls help…

  11. This can also occur if using Outlook 2003 against Exchange 2010 and you don’t have “Encrypt data between Microsoft … blah” checked. Using Outlook Profiler helped me figure this out.

  12. It worked once for me but later the same problem started again, after too much struggle I found a solid solution and that is:
    Go to Exchange server ::> Services ::> Check if this service is started (Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Services) if it’s started give it a restart

  13. I just uninstall office and restart the pc, then re-install office, the same edition..Configure the mail, it works fine

  14. check to make sure on your host server that the following service is started and running:
    “Microsoft Exchange Information Store”

  15. Please check your exchange server mailbox database dismount or not. Mount the database or create new database from Organization configuration–>MailBox–>Select new MialBox Database.

    I got same prob and it is fixed.

  16. Thanks, you don’t know how many TechNet articles I consulted before reading your solution. And it is something so simple!

  17. Dear Magnus Johansson,

    Thanks for this simple and small piece of information, this is worked for me while I was testing outlook 2003 with Exchange 2010.

  18. We found a weird solution to this issue. We had the user open up OWA from their local machine on our LAN and then open up outlook. Not sure what the correlation was but when we run into this issue, opening both up always seems to fix it.

  19. I tried these solutions but nothing worked. This is what solved my problem. I restarted machine and logged in as local admin and renamed the problematic user profile under: “C:UsersKeith” to: :C:UsersKeith.old” then I deleted the registry user profile entry under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList (deleted entire folder). I then logged in as Keith and user profile was recreated and outlook connection worked on first attempt.

  20. Resolved… I had this issue from my users who did not have duplicate exchange servers nor duplicate profiles. I completely uninstalled Outlook from the control panel “change” option of office. Rebooted the computer to update the registry and reinstalled outlook. I gave it another reboot and had her log in…. Bam!!! Resolved. Hope it works for you… I would try this first!

  21. start – controlpanal – mail – email account – e mail – dubble click on mail address -now open change e mail account box – more setting -connection tab – tik connect to microsoft exchange using HTTP – click on exchange proxy setting – now open microsoft exchane proxy setting box – uncheck connect using ssl only – and put your exchange server ip address in http:// box – ok

    i suffer 4 months no one can salutation even microsoft also ….

  22. Hii
    Thanks for providing such an useful information. But I also want to provide you some more information about it as i got it when i was going through one article to resolve such type of an error. And finally I got the best result by using that utility which is easy to use and also saves time. As firstly I went through manual solutions but I am not satisfied with that. So you can also try it’s demo version by clicking on the given link according to your need or situation. http://www.importostfiles.org/article/can-not-start-microsoft-outlook.html

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