Need to Disable One Exchange Account in Outlook 2010

Question

I've inherited a messy Outlook configuration on a client's computer: Outlook 2010, a single Mail Profile, with 4 email accounts set up. Connecting to three different Exchange Servers, plus an IMAP Gmail thrown in for good measure.

Issue 1: The client has left one company, and wants to remove the associated Exchange account. Attempting to delete it results in an error saying that the Primary Exchange account cannot be deleted. I've checked to make sure that its not the default account, and research online suggests that this is a known bug with Outlook 2010, when attempting to connect to multiple Exchange accounts.

The stated workaround is to export everything, delete the mail profile entirely, create a new mail profile, recreate the accounts that are actually needed, and reimport. This is an amount of effort is more than the client is willing to put in.

In the last few days, the client's account on that company's Exchange server has apparently been disabled, because now it has started prompting him to enter his password every few minutes.

I need to be able to disable the connection to this particular Exchange server, without disabling the connection to the other servers or the IMAP.

ISSUE 2: the Gmail IMAP is intermittently losing its ability to send email. Pops up a message saying that Outlook cannot connect to the server. The Exchange accounts are unaffected, as is Internet access. Gmail can be accessed via Internet Explorer. A few hours later it will start working again, then a day or two later it will stop again.

Solution

You could try a process like this one: http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/primary-account-removed-outlook-2010/, which involves a bit of registry editing, that might allow you to remove the primary account.

Relevant text:

Remove the primary account by editing the registry

You can edit the registry to remove the primary assignment, however it is not supported and not recommended by Microsoft. If you mess up, you will need to make a new profile, restore the profile key you exported, or use System Restore to go back to a previous restore point.

Close Outlook and open the registry editor.

Press Windows key + R to open the Run command then type regedit in the Run field and press Enter.

Tip: Export the profile key before editing, so you can recover your profile if you make a mistake.

To remove the Outlook 2010 primary account from the registry, go to the profile key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Windows Messaging SubSystem\Profile\profile-name

In Outlook 2013, the profile key moved to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Profiles\profile-name

Export the profile key then search for and remove one (or both) of the registry keys related to primary account.

I searched the profile for 001f662b as this value is used by each account. You'll find two keys containing this value for each account and you need to delete the second key that belongs to the primary account (you can delete both keys). Once I did this, I could delete the primary account from the profile.

Note: you need to delete the entire key (on the left side), not just the registry value. The value helps you find the right key to delete.

In my experience though, creating a new profile is the better option.