I have the same issue, only in my data files I only have one set of personal
folders listed, but in outlook, I have three sets of personal folders. I
have tried to figure out why, but can't seem to come up with a solution.

"nancie" wrote:

Gene, I found this answer-short, sweet and to the point, offered in another
thread regarding duplicate archive folders. I followed the instructions and
in 2 seconds the second set of personal folders was GONE........


Close Outlook | START | CONTROL PANEL | MAIL | SHOW PROFILES | Click your
Profile | PROPERTIES| DATA FILES | click the duplicate personal folder |
REMOVE | YES | CLOSE | CLOSE | OK
Start Outlook and they will not be present anymore

I'm sorry I didn't notice who provided this fabulously simple solution, but
it worked and I thank whomever it was!

"Gene Miller" wrote:

Dear Russ,

I am having the same problem: duplicate appearance of the main Personal
Folder in the folder list.

I have studied all of the responses in this and other threads and I have
thoroughly researched the problem as far as I can go with this. I really need
a solution that is different from the ones offered previously (e.g. start
with a brand new profile, or experiment with an extremely cryptic registry
that only displays hexadecimal for all Unicode text).


PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

I maintain 7 very active email accounts as well as 5 email accounts that I
use occasionally.
Of the 7 very active accounts, 3 are POP3, and 4 are IMAP.
Messages for the 3 POP3 accounts are received in the Inbox in my mail
Personal Folder.
Each of the 4 IMAP accounts has its own .PST file.
In addition, all of the messages I send are copied into the Sent folder in
my main Personal Folder. There are additional folders for storing read mail
in my Personal Folder, and I have numerous archival .PST files.

About a month ago I successfully migrated my Outlook configuration and email
from an old machine to a new machine using “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My
Settings Wizard�.

Two days ago I reinstalled Windows in the new machine and followed this
procedu
1. Backed-up settings with “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard�.
2. Copied all .PST files to removable media
3. Formatted C drive
4. Installed Windows XP SP2
5. Installed Office 2003
6. Installed Office 2003 SP1
7. Copied all .PST files into “C:\Documents and Settings\Gene\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook�
8. Restored settings “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard�

I started using Outlook and everything seemed normal after entering
passwords for all active email accounts.

But after several hours I saw that there were THREE (3) instances of the
main Personal Folder within the “All Mail Folders� panel in Outlook.
Additional symptoms:

1. All 3 instances pointed to the same .PST file. I.e. if deleted a message
in one instance, the change was seen in the other two instances.
2. The “House� icon appeared next to the 1st instance.
3. The “Multiple Folders� icon appeared next to the 2nd and 3rd instance.
4. Properties for all 3 instances showed the “House� icon.
5. Right-mouse click “Close� was disabled (gray) for all 3 instances.
6. Clicking “PropertiesTotal Size� showed the same size (118,209 KB) for
all 3 instances
7. Clicking “PropertiesAdvanced� resulted in error message “(EXCLAMATION!)
The operation failed. An object could not be found.�

I then tried “"c:\program files\microsoft office\office\outlook.exe"
a/cleanprofile as proposed by
http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;303931 . This
resulted in an error message, so I remove the letter “a�, and it ran but it
did not fix the problem.

I then studied the registry for several hours and determined that this was
too difficult to mess with because Outlook 2003 most of the pertinent
information as Unicode, which regedit displays as Hexadecimal.

At this point I had the thought that the inability to close the several
instances of the main Personal Folder was related to their being the location
for delivering new email for the POP3 accounts.

I then created a new .PST file and named this “Temp� in Outlook. Using the
mail account wizard, I changed “Deliver new email … :� from my main Personal
Folder to the new “Temp� folder. After restarting Outlook I observed that
right-mouse click “Close� was no longer disabled (gray). However, when I
tried right-mouse click “Close� I received the error message “(EXCLAMATION!)
The operation failed. An object could not be found.�

Outlook then automatically polled all of my POP3 accounts and downloaded
dozens of messages into the new Temp folder. These were mostly messages that
had previously been downloaded to my main Personal Folder, but which had also
been left on the servers. I copied only the newest ones into my main Personal
Folder.

I then changed “Deliver new email … :� back to my main Personal Folder and
restarted Outlook.
I then tried to get rid of the Temp folder and I did something (I am not
sure what it was) that resulted in two additional instances of a new folder
with zero-length name. When I clicked on either instances I received the
error message ““(EXCLAMATION!) The set of folders could not be opened. Show
Help� The help message said “This error usually appears if the OST or PST
file you are using is: Unavailable; Protected with file permissions; On a
share on a server and the network is down; Corrupt; To correct this problem,
store the OST or PST file on the local computer; You may also want to run the
scanost.exe and scanpst.exe tools to verify file integrity.�
I then tried unsuccessfully to get rid of these instances.

MY CALL TO BANGALORE

Finally, out of desperation, I called MS for $35. The tech in Bangalore
spent 2 hours with me going through everything that I had previously tried.

He then asked me first back-up my outlook.PST file.

He then asked me to select “FileData File Management…�. I observed that
this displayed a single instance of my main Personal Folder which was
associated with my outlook.PST file.

He then asked me select this instance and to click “Remove�.

This immediately removed the single instance of and the associated
Outlook.PST file from the list. This also removed one of the three instances
of my main Personal Folder from the folder list, which now left 2 instances
on the folder list.

After a while he had a brainstorm. He said that I should import everything
into Outlook Express, create a new profile in Outook, and import everything
back. I said I liked the boldbess of the concept and would give it a try. We
soon relaized, however, that Outlook Express had no capability for handling
the Calendar or other advanced features, so we abandoned this approach.

CONCLUSION

I need to fix the following things that are broken:
1. Eliminate the one extra instance of my main Personal Folder
2. Assure that the “FileData File Management..� list shows my main Personal
Folder associated with my Outlook.PST file.
3. Get rid of the two useless zero-length names that are appearing in the
folder list.

Please email or call me at 914-772-5706 if this is not clear.

Thanks

Gene Miller



"Russ Valentine [MVP Outlook]" wrote:

These ghost folders only appear if Outlook data has been migrated
incorrectly. Microsoft provides ample instructions on how to migrate
Outlook data correctly.
The problem is yours and yours to solve. Creating a new profile is
simply the easiest and safest way to solve this problem. I can provide
registry hacks if you prefer that route:

(Win XP) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

Within the Outlook folder, there are a bunch of folders with long
hexadecimal values for names -- those are the ones you need to look in
to see if you can find the ghost .PST names. Export that key for safety
then delete it. If you delete the keys and that it point to your real
..PST file instead of one of the ghosts, it's not the end of the world --
your data won't be gone. The worst you would have to do is merge back
the key you exported or recreate your Outlook profile.

------
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Camisade wrote:
I have this problem too... threefold over. I've used a program call Outback
plus to migrate Outlook to a new computer and also have the ghost entries.

So, no matter WHERE the blame lies (The Outback Plus folks say it's a bug in
Outlook), what I find REALLY hard to believe is that there isn't a reasonably
clean way to delete those "ghost" Outlook Personal Folder entries.

I find the answer of having to go through the whole "create a new profile"
process to be clumsy and unacceptable, because each time one has to do that,
one has to recreate ALL the email accounts (I use about 15), all the rules,
and in most cases either reconfigure and completely uninstall and reinstall
all the com add-ins (I probably use about five, between PGP, and LookOut,
etc), not to mention losing all the accumulated training associated with a
good bayesian spam blocker (I use SpamBayes).

So, there MUST be either a datafile editor or a reg key editor (or a set of
instructions to follow in regedit for advanced users), that will get rid of
these ridiculous ghost Personal Folders entries (and ghost contacts and
calendar entries, for that matter).

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:


You migrated your data incorrectly and corrupted your profile. You must
create a new profile and make sure you connect it ONLY to the PST file you
want to use as your default.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Paul S" Paul wrote in message
...

Sorry to start this up again, but I've got the same problem Doreen had: a
new
PC (Windows XP), fresh install of Office 2003, only one pst file but two
identical Personal Folders. My old PC has only one personal folder, but
after transfering pst file my new PC insists on duplicating the Persoanl
Folder. Both operate as the default, so I'm unable to close or delete
either
of them. I use Office extensively for emails, calendar, tasks etc.

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:


Very unusual. I don't think I've ever seen Outlook create duplicate
Personal
Folders by itself with a clean install.
If it happens again, creating a new profile is the easiest way to fix the
problem.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Doreen" wrote in message
news
Thank you for responding. No, I did not migrate any files. Upon opening
for
the first time, duplicate Personal Folders displayed. No data had been
imported or files copied.

Since my post, I have sucessfully coped my .pst file from the computer
from
which I am upgrading. After installation on the new computer, and
working
through the problem, it appears that the duplicate Personal Folders
problem
has been corrected. Thank you again for your kind response. It was
very
much
appreciated.

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:


This is usually the result of a corrupt profile caused by migrating
Outlook
data incorrectly.
After this fresh install, did you migrate data from an earlier version
of
Outlook? If so, how?
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Doreen" wrote in message
...

On a new computer, I have done a fresh install of Office 2003.
Outlook
displays two identical copies of the Personal Folders. Changes to
one
are
reflected in the duplicate. There is only one .pst file. I have
removed
and
reinstalled Outlook to no avail.

I would like to know what might be causing this duplicate folder to
display
or how it could be removed. Thank you.









Subject: Outlook displays two identical Personal Folders 2/2/2005
10:41 AM PST

By: Joe G In: microsoft.public.outlook.installation

Was this post helpful to you?


I had the same problem but solved it a different way. I had two different
.pst files but one was displayed twice, giving me the appearance of three. I
had to set my default email account to be the one that wasn't duplicated.
Then I removed the account that was duplicated, exited Outlook, re-added it
back, and then pointed my email accounts back to the original .PST. That way

Create a new mail profile and point it to reuse your current active .pst
file.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Gwana asked:

| I have the same issue, only in my data files I only have one set of
| personal folders listed, but in outlook, I have three sets of
| personal folders. I have tried to figure out why, but can't seem to
| come up with a solution.
|
| "nancie" wrote:
|
|| Gene, I found this answer-short, sweet and to the point, offered in
|| another thread regarding duplicate archive folders. I followed the
|| instructions and in 2 seconds the second set of personal folders was
|| GONE........
||
||
|| Close Outlook | START | CONTROL PANEL | MAIL | SHOW PROFILES | Click
|| your Profile | PROPERTIES| DATA FILES | click the duplicate personal
|| folder | REMOVE | YES | CLOSE | CLOSE | OK
|| Start Outlook and they will not be present anymore
||
|| I'm sorry I didn't notice who provided this fabulously simple
|| solution, but it worked and I thank whomever it was!
||
|| "Gene Miller" wrote:
||
||| Dear Russ,
|||
||| I am having the same problem: duplicate appearance of the main
||| Personal
||| Folder in the folder list.
|||
||| I have studied all of the responses in this and other threads and I
||| have thoroughly researched the problem as far as I can go with
||| this. I really need
||| a solution that is different from the ones offered previously (e.g.
||| start
||| with a brand new profile, or experiment with an extremely cryptic
||| registry
||| that only displays hexadecimal for all Unicode text).
|||
|||
||| PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
|||
||| I maintain 7 very active email accounts as well as 5 email accounts
||| that I
||| use occasionally.
||| Of the 7 very active accounts, 3 are POP3, and 4 are IMAP.
||| Messages for the 3 POP3 accounts are received in the Inbox in my
||| mail
||| Personal Folder.
||| Each of the 4 IMAP accounts has its own .PST file.
||| In addition, all of the messages I send are copied into the Sent
||| folder in
||| my main Personal Folder. There are additional folders for storing
||| read mail
||| in my Personal Folder, and I have numerous archival .PST files.
|||
||| About a month ago I successfully migrated my Outlook configuration
||| and email
||| from an old machine to a new machine using “Microsoft Office 2003
||| Save My Settings Wizard�.
|||
||| Two days ago I reinstalled Windows in the new machine and followed
||| this procedu
||| 1. Backed-up settings with “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My
||| Settings Wizard�.
||| 2. Copied all .PST files to removable media
||| 3. Formatted C drive
||| 4. Installed Windows XP SP2
||| 5. Installed Office 2003
||| 6. Installed Office 2003 SP1
||| 7. Copied all .PST files into “C:\Documents and
||| Settings\Gene\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook�
||| 8. Restored settings “Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings
||| Wizard�
|||
||| I started using Outlook and everything seemed normal after entering
||| passwords for all active email accounts.
|||
||| But after several hours I saw that there were THREE (3) instances
||| of the
||| main Personal Folder within the “All Mail Folders� panel in
||| Outlook. Additional symptoms:
|||
||| 1. All 3 instances pointed to the same .PST file. I.e. if deleted a
||| message
||| in one instance, the change was seen in the other two instances.
||| 2. The “House� icon appeared next to the 1st instance.
||| 3. The “Multiple Folders� icon appeared next to the 2nd and 3rd
||| instance.
||| 4. Properties for all 3 instances showed the “House� icon.
||| 5. Right-mouse click “Close� was disabled (gray) for all 3
||| instances.
||| 6. Clicking “PropertiesTotal Size� showed the same size
||| (118,209 KB) for
||| all 3 instances
||| 7. Clicking “PropertiesAdvanced� resulted in error message
||| “(EXCLAMATION!) The operation failed. An object could not be
||| found.�
|||
||| I then tried “"c:\program files\microsoft
||| office\office\outlook.exe" a/cleanprofile as proposed by
||| http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;303931 .
||| This
||| resulted in an error message, so I remove the letter “a�, and
||| it ran but it did not fix the problem.
|||
||| I then studied the registry for several hours and determined that
||| this was
||| too difficult to mess with because Outlook 2003 most of the
||| pertinent
||| information as Unicode, which regedit displays as Hexadecimal.
|||
||| At this point I had the thought that the inability to close the
||| several
||| instances of the main Personal Folder was related to their being
||| the location
||| for delivering new email for the POP3 accounts.
|||
||| I then created a new .PST file and named this “Temp� in
||| Outlook. Using the mail account wizard, I changed “Deliver new
||| email … :� from my main Personal Folder to the new “Temp�
||| folder. After restarting Outlook I observed that right-mouse click
||| “Close� was no longer disabled (gray). However, when I tried
||| right-mouse click “Close� I received the error message
||| “(EXCLAMATION!) The operation failed. An object could not be
||| found.�
|||
||| Outlook then automatically polled all of my POP3 accounts and
||| downloaded
||| dozens of messages into the new Temp folder. These were mostly
||| messages that
||| had previously been downloaded to my main Personal Folder, but
||| which had also been left on the servers. I copied only the newest
||| ones into my main Personal Folder.
|||
||| I then changed “Deliver new email … :� back to my main
||| Personal Folder and restarted Outlook.
||| I then tried to get rid of the Temp folder and I did something (I
||| am not
||| sure what it was) that resulted in two additional instances of a
||| new folder
||| with zero-length name. When I clicked on either instances I
||| received the
||| error message ““(EXCLAMATION!) The set of folders could not be
||| opened. Show Help� The help message said “This error usually
||| appears if the OST or PST file you are using is: Unavailable;
||| Protected with file permissions; On a
||| share on a server and the network is down; Corrupt; To correct this
||| problem, store the OST or PST file on the local computer; You may
||| also want to run the scanost.exe and scanpst.exe tools to verify
||| file integrity.�
||| I then tried unsuccessfully to get rid of these instances.
|||
||| MY CALL TO BANGALORE
|||
||| Finally, out of desperation, I called MS for $35. The tech in
||| Bangalore
||| spent 2 hours with me going through everything that I had
||| previously tried.
|||
||| He then asked me first back-up my outlook.PST file.
|||
||| He then asked me to select “FileData File Management…�. I
||| observed that this displayed a single instance of my main Personal
||| Folder which was
||| associated with my outlook.PST file.
|||
||| He then asked me select this instance and to click “Remove�.
|||
||| This immediately removed the single instance of and the associated
||| Outlook.PST file from the list. This also removed one of the three
||| instances
||| of my main Personal Folder from the folder list, which now left 2
||| instances
||| on the folder list.
|||
||| After a while he had a brainstorm. He said that I should import
||| everything
||| into Outlook Express, create a new profile in Outook, and import
||| everything
||| back. I said I liked the boldbess of the concept and would give it
||| a try. We
||| soon relaized, however, that Outlook Express had no capability for
||| handling
||| the Calendar or other advanced features, so we abandoned this
||| approach.
|||
||| CONCLUSION
|||
||| I need to fix the following things that are broken:
||| 1. Eliminate the one extra instance of my main Personal Folder
||| 2. Assure that the “FileData File Management..� list shows my
||| main Personal Folder associated with my Outlook.PST file.
||| 3. Get rid of the two useless zero-length names that are appearing
||| in the
||| folder list.
|||
||| Please email or call me at 914-772-5706 if this is not clear.
|||
||| Thanks
|||
||| Gene Miller
|||
|||
|||
||| "Russ Valentine [MVP Outlook]" wrote:
|||
|||| These ghost folders only appear if Outlook data has been migrated
|||| incorrectly. Microsoft provides ample instructions on how to
|||| migrate Outlook data correctly.
|||| The problem is yours and yours to solve. Creating a new profile is
|||| simply the easiest and safest way to solve this problem. I can
|||| provide registry hacks if you prefer that route:
||||
|||| (Win XP) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
|||| NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook
||||
|||| Within the Outlook folder, there are a bunch of folders with long
|||| hexadecimal values for names -- those are the ones you need to
|||| look in to see if you can find the ghost .PST names. Export that
|||| key for safety then delete it. If you delete the keys and that it
|||| point to your real ..PST file instead of one of the ghosts, it's
|||| not the end of the world -- your data won't be gone. The worst
|||| you would have to do is merge back the key you exported or
|||| recreate your Outlook profile.
||||
|||| ------
|||| Russ Valentine
|||| [MVP-Outlook]
||||
|||| Camisade wrote:
||||| I have this problem too... threefold over. I've used a program
||||| call Outback plus to migrate Outlook to a new computer and also
||||| have the ghost entries.
|||||
||||| So, no matter WHERE the blame lies (The Outback Plus folks say
||||| it's a bug in Outlook), what I find REALLY hard to believe is
||||| that there isn't a reasonably clean way to delete those "ghost"
||||| Outlook Personal Folder entries.
|||||
||||| I find the answer of having to go through the whole "create a new
||||| profile" process to be clumsy and unacceptable, because each time
||||| one has to do that, one has to recreate ALL the email accounts (I
||||| use about 15), all the rules, and in most cases either
||||| reconfigure and completely uninstall and reinstall all the com
||||| add-ins (I probably use about five, between PGP, and LookOut,
||||| etc), not to mention losing all the accumulated training
||||| associated with a good bayesian spam blocker (I use SpamBayes).
|||||
||||| So, there MUST be either a datafile editor or a reg key editor
||||| (or a set of instructions to follow in regedit for advanced
||||| users), that will get rid of these ridiculous ghost Personal
||||| Folders entries (and ghost contacts and calendar entries, for
||||| that matter).
|||||
||||| "Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:
|||||
|||||
|||||| You migrated your data incorrectly and corrupted your profile.
|||||| You must create a new profile and make sure you connect it ONLY
|||||| to the PST file you want to use as your default.
|||||| --
|||||| Russ Valentine
|||||| [MVP-Outlook]
|||||| "Paul S" Paul wrote in message
|||||| ...
||||||
||||||| Sorry to start this up again, but I've got the same problem
||||||| Doreen had: a new
||||||| PC (Windows XP), fresh install of Office 2003, only one pst
||||||| file but two identical Personal Folders. My old PC has only
||||||| one personal folder, but after transfering pst file my new PC
||||||| insists on duplicating the Persoanl Folder. Both operate as
||||||| the default, so I'm unable to close or delete either
||||||| of them. I use Office extensively for emails, calendar, tasks
||||||| etc.
|||||||
||||||| "Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:
|||||||
|||||||
|||||||| Very unusual. I don't think I've ever seen Outlook create
|||||||| duplicate Personal
|||||||| Folders by itself with a clean install.
|||||||| If it happens again, creating a new profile is the easiest way
|||||||| to fix the problem.
|||||||| --
|||||||| Russ Valentine
|||||||| [MVP-Outlook]
|||||||| "Doreen" wrote in message
|||||||| news ||||||||
||||||||| Thank you for responding. No, I did not migrate any files.
||||||||| Upon opening for
||||||||| the first time, duplicate Personal Folders displayed. No data
||||||||| had been imported or files copied.
|||||||||
||||||||| Since my post, I have sucessfully coped my .pst file from the
||||||||| computer from
||||||||| which I am upgrading. After installation on the new computer,
||||||||| and working
||||||||| through the problem, it appears that the duplicate Personal
||||||||| Folders problem
||||||||| has been corrected. Thank you again for your kind response.
||||||||| It was very
||||||||| much
||||||||| appreciated.
|||||||||
||||||||| "Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:
|||||||||
|||||||||
|||||||||| This is usually the result of a corrupt profile caused by
|||||||||| migrating Outlook
|||||||||| data incorrectly.
|||||||||| After this fresh install, did you migrate data from an
|||||||||| earlier version of
|||||||||| Outlook? If so, how?
|||||||||| --
|||||||||| Russ Valentine
|||||||||| [MVP-Outlook]
|||||||||| "Doreen" wrote in message
|||||||||| ...
||||||||||
||||||||||| On a new computer, I have done a fresh install of Office
||||||||||| 2003. Outlook
||||||||||| displays two identical copies of the Personal Folders.
||||||||||| Changes to one
||||||||||| are
||||||||||| reflected in the duplicate. There is only one .pst file. I
||||||||||| have removed
||||||||||| and
||||||||||| reinstalled Outlook to no avail.
|||||||||||
||||||||||| I would like to know what might be causing this duplicate
||||||||||| folder to display
||||||||||| or how it could be removed. Thank you.
||||||||||
||||||||||
||||||||||
||||||||
||||||||
||||||
||||||
||||
|||
||| Subject: Outlook displays two identical Personal Folders
||| 2/2/2005 10:41 AM PST
|||
||| By: Joe G In: microsoft.public.outlook.installation
|||
||| Was this post helpful to you?
|||
|||
||| I had the same problem but solved it a different way. I had two
||| different .pst files but one was displayed twice, giving me the
||| appearance of three. I
||| had to set my default email account to be the one that wasn't
||| duplicated.
||| Then I removed the account that was duplicated, exited Outlook,
||| re-added it
||| back, and then pointed my email accounts back to the original .PST.
||| That way