Creating User Profiles with each having their own Address Book and sets of Identities

From Control Panel, double click on Users
Press the New User button
Press NEXT
Give it a name - Bob for instance
Press NEXT
Leave the  passwords empty for now, usually best anyway, if someone really want to see what's where, they can, just when you log on don't press Cancel, that ruins the password file for later on.
Press NEXT
Check all the boxes.


Now, if you select "Create copies of the current items an their contents" everything in the current Programs menu and such will be copied, the Profiles will all look the same. If you select "Create new items to save disk space", you get a minimum and  it's a bare minimum of items on the start menu. Choose the default, you can change things later.

Do this for each user but don't name each one Bob.  Just checking to see if you're reading this, it's late and I should be in bed and I'm trying to have some sort of humor out of today, yesterday was a bomb. :-)

That starts that part, getting Outlook Express to have a separate  Address Book and Message stores requires a bit more but can be done but then it depends upon a few things like people having different e-mail addresses (this is a main one or the e-mail will come in to whoever is logged on).

If you need help with that part post back, I wrote something similar tonight in another message and probably another newsgroup but if you have an e-mail address for everybody post back or e-mail and we can sort out all the stuff that needs to be done where no one sees no one else's mail or address book.

Open the main or first Profile then open Outlook Express and look in Tools | Options | Maintenance tabsheet. Press the Store Folders button and write down the folder name (will have a {GUID} init which is a long weird hex number.

Now, open Address Book.   Help | About and see what folder it gives for the Address Book and the name for it.

Ok, log on to each of the other Profile and open OE. Create a new Identity and the switch to it.  Make th echanges to the e-mail address and such info for each person.  Once done, delete the old Identity (File | Identities | Manage Identities).  Don't do this for the main or first Profile only the other Profiles you created.

Do this for each Profile. And each Profile will have it's own totally separate message store.

Open Windows Explorer. Navigate to the Windows\Profiles folder Inside there are the Profiles folders with the username.

Application Data\Identities will contain the {GUID} of the original Identity and the new one (except the first one which wasn't changed). You can delete the original Identity {GUID} if you want from the other profiles. Just leave the one that isn't the same as the original one you wrote down as that is not the Identity they will use.


Ok, look in the Application Data\Microsoft folder and you will see an Address Book folder for each Profile.

Do you want to share the Address Book? If yes,  stop here, you're done.

If you want each to have their own Address Book,  we need to create some new Address Books for them to use.

Leave the first or Main Profile alone on this part as well unless you want to change it, it's not necessary since it will default to the original Address Book location.

Change to one of the other Profiles.

START | Run then type in:

wab /new

and press ENTER

You are prompted for a name to give it, username of the Profile will be good to use and for a location, change it to the Windows\Profiles\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book

(where <username> is the name of the Profile).

Press the OPEN button and a new one is created, empty but created. Addresses can be imported in later.

Now that you have the new wab file created,  we have to make a change in the registry IN each Profile. There is no one shot gets them all deal here. Each registry will show something different (because each will  have their own User.dat)  for each Profile so you have to switch to each Profile to do this part as well.


START | Run    then type in   Regedit     and press ENTER
Press the + sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Press the + sign next to Software
Press the + sign next to Microsoft
Press the + sign next to WAB
Press the + sign next to WAB4
Click on the  Wab File Name key in the left window.
In the right window, you will see  {Default}
Double click on it.
Here you make the change to the new path list and wab filename.

C:\Windows\Profiles\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\<username>.wab

where <username> is the Profile name and the Address Book name.

Press ENTER when it's correct and close Regedit

Open Address Book and you will see it's empty and press Help | About and see the location is now in the folder you put it.

Log off and log on in one of the other Profiles rinse and repeat, just like the shampoo bottle. :-).


Each Profile will have it's own Identity.
Each Profile will have it's own Address Book.