This week, I installed Outlook on Windows (I’m unfortunately stuck with Windows for at least the next month or so) at work, and it promptly downloaded all my email, deleting it from our Exchange server as it went. Since I wipe Windows fairly often, I don’t feel like backing up a year and a half of emails frequently, so here are the instructions to get that email back up on the server.

Turns out there was an option during installation that I missed, regarding datafiles. I haven’t reinstalled to find that option, but this will help you fix if you missed it, too.

1. Start the E-mail Accounts wizard by clicking on Tools -> E-mail Accounts.
2. Choose “View or change existing e-mail accounts” and click the Next button
3. Select your account (it was “Microsoft Exchange Server” for me)
4. In the dropdown at the bottom of the window, change it from “Personal Folders” to “Mailbox - <username>” and click the Finish button
5. Now that your mail is going to the right place, we have to copy your downloaded mail back in
6. Select all the items in your Personal Folders/Inbox, and right-click and select “Move to Folder…”
7. Choose the inbox under “Mailbox - <username>” and click the OK button

Now it will copy all the mail back to your Exchange server automatically, and you’re back in business. NOTE: If you have a lot of email, that last step (the actual copying) is going to take a while. I had ~5600 mails, and it took about 20 minutes.