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The Outlook Master Category List is a way to tag messages, contacts, appointments and more. Copying it to another machine requires a little trickery.
How can I move my Outlook Master Category List to another machine?
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Outlook categories are a fairly powerful way to categorize and organize email, appointments, tasks ... just about any object that Outlook is capable of tracking. Categories are arbitrary text, but you can create a "Master List" of categories to choose from to ensure consistency and avoid a bit of possibly error prone typing.
Unfortunately, while you can edit your master category list to your heart's content, Outlook doesn't yet provide a way to export or import one. It's also not obvious where the list is kept.
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It's probably not surprising that the list is kept in the registry. It's stored as a REG_BINARY entry as a Unicode string.
It's a slightly different location for each version of Outlook.
The best way to manage your master category list in that case is to:
- Create the master category list you want in Outlook.
- Use the registry editor to save the category list registry entry to disk as a .reg file.
- "Execute" that .reg file to install that master category list on other computers running outlook that should have the same list. Note that on these computers any prior master category list will be replaced with this new one.
It's really not too bad. Here are the Microsoft Support articles that describe the process for each version of Outlook:
Why is there no user interface? My guess is that it comes down to the old feature versus schedule tradeoff. The demand for a user interface for this didn't warrant the additional time and expense to design, develop, and test it. But that's just speculation on my part.
Article C1835 - August 25, 2003
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
Hi. I am not sure that the above article & postings cover my problem. I have had Outlook 2003 transfered to a new laptop from my old PC's hardrive. All my contacts are there and each contact has it's category(s) attached in the little box at the bottom. But the actual category pop-up menu does not contain those categories. If I have missed the point, could someone point me to the right bit, or if it has not been explained, could some kind soul explain how to get the old master categories across to my laptop. Grateful thanks in advance.
Posted by: CharlieP at July 23, 2008 4:36 AMOutlook 2007
Posted by: Guillermo at October 29, 2008 12:47 PMHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Categories
@CharlieP, as you've seen your master category list is lost. With Category Manager you can get it back easily. The tool can read the categories assigned to all of your items, and add them back to the master category list.
Posted by: Michael at February 12, 2009 9:18 AM@Guillermo, for Outlook 2007 the categories are stored in the PST file itself. You won't find them in the registry anymore.
Subject: Transferring my Categories list on Outlook 2007 to our association's new shared Outlook Contacts on MS Exchange.
How does one proceed if there is no more registry key?
Posted by: Grains of Peace at May 31, 2009 4:29 PMThe 'Category Manager' on www.VBOffice.net is from 2006 and costs way too much for a small association with 6 member PCs. And what we need for keepong a Master Category list seems to be the Enterprise Manager costing even more. The trial version leads to a licence fee that has to be approved but makes no mention that it concerns a trial version.
Any other solution?
Many thanks!
You can use also the program Public Categories (http://www.publicshareware.com/public-categories-description.php) to share your category list in the network or to move them easily to another computer. It works with Outlook 2000 and higher.
Posted by: Dirk at March 9, 2010 12:29 AM