NOTE: While this page was originally written for Outlook Express version 5.x, if you are using Outlook Express 6.x, the dialogs will use a 6 instead of a 5. Other than that, all else is the same.
Should you need to remove and Identity because of a lost password, the change will have to be made in the registry. No mail messages will be lost.
Regedit is the tool you will use to edit the registry. You can back up the settings if you wish, then edit the saved .reg file to save the settings that were made (like you remembered the password two minutes after deleting the key). Doing so has some uses but if you have a lot of Message Rules or Blocked Senders list, you will want to export particular parts which can be edited and imported back into the registry. I won't get into this for now, but will put the information on another web page and will have a link here as well as the main page when completed.
To begin, press the Start button and select RUN.
Type in Regedit
then press ENTER
The registry editor opens and you will see six lines with + signs next to them. Locate HKEY_CURRENT_USER key.
Press the + sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. It will expand showing several sub keys. Locate the Identities key and press the + sign next to Identities
A list of {GUID} keys will show. These are unique to each user and computer unless there have been modifications made. These consist a series of letters and numbers enclosed in braces.
Example: {AFE1AA0D-D202-4C52-AC8D-F68DE06421C1}
Click on each {GUID} key in the left window pane. Look in the right window pane for the Username string. This will show you which {GUID} belongs to which Identity. Write this value down or copy and paste it into Notepad.
You can double click on User
ID and the value will be set to edit and will be highlighted so you can copy
it.
The message stores are usually located in a folder with this {GUID} in the name and is usually:
Windows\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
These files have a .dbx extension. These can not be read directly using a hex or text editor. The messages contained in them are scattered about with parts of the messages here, there and elsewhere in the dbx file. Opening it in a test editor and accidentally saving it back will corrupt the file and make it unreadable. A program written by MVP Steve Cochran can read and extract the messages from the dbx files. If you opened with say, WordPad, and saved the file, even DBXtract probably won't be able to read it. The URL for Steve's site is http://chattanooga.net/~scochran/DBXtract.htm Since this page was originally written, Steve has expanded the program to DBXtend. See http://chattanooga.net/~scochran/DBXtend.htm for more info on this one.
Locate the Identity you need to remove and click on it's {GUID} key. Click on Regedit's Registry menu and select Export Registry File. Give it a name such as Lost Identity and press the save button Now that you have a backup of it, which we will use later if you wish to recreate the Identity, press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it.
The Identity has now been removed. The mail messages are not lost and can be imported into a new or existing Identity. If you wish to just import the messages and not create a new Identity to store them skip on down the page to "Importing the Old Messages", if not, start Outlook Express and click on the File menu and select Identities | Add New Identity.
Type in the Name you wish to give the Identity. Also, considering you lost the last password, might want to leave the Require a password box unchecked. At least for now.
If you wish to import the messages, see Importing Outlook Express 5 and 6 Messages