Outlook 2016 Upgrade Frustration

[jonah8208]

I got a copy of Windows Office Home and Business 2016 to install and set up for a client. Guy is a small businessman migrating from 2007 to 2016 and has bought like for like being unimpressed with paying for 365 on a subs basis. And at 9 years between upgrades the guy has a point!. I could not get the Outlook 2016 to import his .pst file or its backups, it was "not accessible" and every time I tried to delete a profile, replace it with a new profile and point Outlook at the relevent .pst it rejected it and went back to the profile I had just deleted somehow.

After much frustration and much scouring of google I figured the only way to delete an existing profile and import a .pst file was to re-install the entire OS (Win 10 Pro)  in this case and then put office in totally clean. Did this on a test box and it worked fine!

I would therefore like to know if anyone here has come across this profile / .pst import madness before and has a solution?

My solution was radical, the client did not want me to re-install his entire machine and he wanted it back pronto - so took Office Business out totally, put a copy of Office Home and Student in which has no Outlook at all and used EM Client which is a new and very good Outlook Clone to replace Outlook. His .pst file got imported, email set up was a doddle, all local forlders, rules, contacts, calendar stuff and tasks got imported (not entirely by magic but easy enough if you read the manual) and it is sorted. Happy customer, much cheaper office installation and although there has been a couple of minor cosmetic issues with EM Client he is very happy with it. Pro version is £30 - $40 or so I reckon US.

So my second question is why have I not found EM Client a lot earlier it is up to V7 now and is massively cheaper than Outlook plus it is a lot more useful?

http://www.emclient.com/

Jonah

Edited February 15, 2017 by jonah8208