How to Uninstall Outlook Express Correctly And Completely

Outlook Express an email client developed by the company of Microsoft, it is available in each Windows operation system as a default component. Some of the computer users may want to uninstall Outlook Express as their computers had other email client application installed and do not want Outlook Express to be activated, or they simply want to remove it for other types of reason, however, since it is a default component of Windows, the removal of Outlook Express is not the same as other regular Windows application/software. If you don’t know how to do it, the tutorial in this page could help you out.

Steps to Uninstall Outlook Express

Two preparations need to be done Before you start. First make sure the Outlook has been closed; Secondary, open ‘My Computer’, go to Tool menu > Folder options, click the ‘View’ tab, in the Advanced Setting section, select ‘show hidden files and folders’ option, and then click ‘apply’ > ‘OK’.

1.Disable Outlook Express from Add/Remove program

• Go to Start menu > Control Panel > Add/Remove program.

• Click the option of ‘Add/Remove Windows components’ at the left side of the window.

• In the next window, check only the ‘Outlook Express’ in the ‘Components’ section. (if you see other Windows components are checked, remove those check marks and leave only the Outlook Express)
• Click the Next button and wait a few seconds.

• After the process finished, click Finish.

• Click Yes in the pop-up message to confirm to restart the computer.

2.Delete Outlook Express folder

• Open My Computer.
• Go to the location of C:\Program Files (letter ‘C’ represents the system drive of the computer)
• Locate the folder name ‘Outlook Express’.
• Right click on the folder and select ‘Delete’ option in the menu.

• You may receive a message telling you that ‘renaming, moving or deleting Outlook Express could make some program not work. Are you sure you want to do this?’, click Yes to confirm.

(Note: If you receive message of ‘cannot delete Outlook Express, it’s being used by another person or program.’ and fail to delete the folder, you may need to restart your computer, enter the Windows Safe Mode, then you can delete the folder successfully without getting this error message. )

3.Rename Outlook Express-related folder

• Open My Computer and move to the system drive.
• Go to ‘Program Files > Common Files > Microsoft Shared
• Find out a folder named Stationary and rename it as ‘old_Stationary’.

• Back to the system drive.
• Go to Documents and Settings > User folder > Application Data
• Rename the folder of ‘Identities’ inside as ‘old_Identities’.

4.Delete Outlook Express registry files

Before you start, please note that registry edition can be risky, it is better to backup the registry first, and also confirm twice before you delete or modify a registry entry, otherwise server system damaged can be caused if you delete a wrong key or entries.

• Go to Start > Run
• Type in ‘regedit’ and hit OK.

• Navigate the registry branch on the left side.
• Locate the below registry entries and right click to delete them all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WAB

• Reboot your computer.

Registry entries screen shots

Video demonstration of how to delete outlook registry entries

5.Rename the related dll file

Go to the \WINDOWS\system32 folder in the system drive, find out the below dll file, rename them all (For example, rename ‘Msoert2.dll’ as ‘old_Msoert2.dll’
Directdb.dll
Wab32.dll
Wab32res.dll
Msoeres.dll
Oeimport.dll
Msoert2.dll
Msoe.dll
Csapi3t1.dll

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