How to Setup Additional Microsoft Outlook 2013 Profiles

Synopsis: In Outlook 2013 a user’s profile determines which mail accounts are used. If several people share a PC, it is possible for each of them to have their own profile. In this article we show you how to setup additional Outlook 2013 profiles.

For most users a single Outlook 2013 profile can enable them to access all of their email accounts. By default, when Outlook 2013 is installed and setup by each Windows user a single profile called Outlook is created.

However, if several people are to share a PC using a single Windows user account it may be appropriate to setup individual Outlook 2013 profiles for each user.

For example, suppose that you wish to share the use of your Windows user account on a PC with somebody called Toby Arnott. To see which profiles currently exist and create a new one for Toby you should first exit Outlook. Then open the Windows Control Panel and select Mail.

You will see the Mail Setup – Outlook dialog. Select the third option Show Profiles… and you will see the Mail dialog.

Note the default single profile called Outlook.

You use this dialog to add or remove profiles, or to look at the properties of an existing profile. You can also copy an existing profile as a starting point for creating a new one.

The options in the lower part of the dialog let you specify whether to prompt for the profile to use when Outlook is started or to always use the selected profile. Note that you cannot switch profiles from within Outlook, so you must make sure that you have the correct profile selected when you start Outlook or you will need to exit and start Outlook again with the correct profile selected.

With the default profile selected, click Properties in this dialog and you will see the Mail Setup – Outlook dialog again, but with the Profiles section omitted.

Using this dialog you can maintain the E-mail accounts for the selected profile, or you can maintain the data files. Note that both of these can be done from within Outlook 2013 itself when the relevant profile is active.

Now return to the Mail dialog and click Add… . The New Profile dialog appears.

Enter a name for the new profile – I’ve used Toby Arnott – and click OK.

The usual Add Account dialog appears, and it’s possible at this point to start adding E-mail accounts for the new profile. Alternatively, the E-mail accounts can be added later. If you decide to add the accounts later, or in my case if I decide to let Toby add his own accounts, press Cancel at this point and you see this dialog.

Click OK and the profile is created, but currently with no E-mail accounts. The Mail dialog now shows the new profile.

You can now use the options in the lower part of the dialog to specify whether you want to prompt for the profile to be used when Outlook is started or to always start Outlook with a specific profile. When you have made your choices click OK.

Note that profiles are not password protected, so anybody with access to the current Windows user account can access any of the profiles. If security is an issue, it may well be better to use separate password-protected Windows user accounts and let each user have his or her own profile.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!