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I just bought Outlook 2019 from Microsoft, downloaded it, and attempted to install it. All of Office installed, which is not what I expect or want. I tried to stop it while it was happening, but closing the window only minimized it (there was no cancel, or anything sensible like that). The progress bar never budged from the left edge. After waiting for a long time, I pulled up Outlook from the Start Menu and Uninstalled it. I did the same from the Control Panel, then noticed that the system notification area still showed an icon for Office downloading. I rebooted and found Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook installed.

I have four questions.

(1) How do I rein in this malware behaviour of the installer and just install what I bought?

(2) How do I go about uninstalling the suite of apps which were imposed upon me?

(3) Is there actually a way to install Outlook alone, or does buying Outlook mean installing all of Office and only enable Outlook? That seems incredibly disrespectful and wasteful of user resources.

(4) When I eventually get to starting Outlook properly, is there a way to create a profile that doesn't connect to a Microsoft account? I bought it (instead of Office 365) in order to manage my personal information locally, and avoid Microsoft's cloud.

With regard to #4, there was a point in the installation process where I was asked for my email address and there was one button -- to connect. I checked off a box to manage/setup my account/profile manually (something to that effect). Nothing happened, but that might be due to my interruption of the unwanted Office setup. It's never clear what state the installer is in. The installer seemed to be designed to railroad you into the cloud, and to go sideways for anything else.

Also regarding #4, I saw this page on setting up Outlook as a PIM without email:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-outlook-without-an-email-account-477a1fc3-4423-4156-bef4-67489edfdbef

I can't follow it, as outlook.exe is not recognized. Even though it shows up when I click Start, I can't right-click it to get it properties & location like in Windows 7. Would anyone know how to get at this in Windows 10?

Thanks.

2nd attempt, 2 days later

I uninstalled all things Office and re-ran the installer *.exe file. It did not ask for my key, so I assumed that the key was requested when I downloaded the installer. Most of the windows in the installation process referred to Office rather than Outlook:

enter image description here

<...slide2...>

I invoked Outlook in the Start menu, but quit when it didn't give me an option to manually set up my account:

<...slide3...>

This is in line with John's suggestion to set up accounts using Mail in the control panel. Depending on where I look, however, I might have Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2019.

enter image description here

Now I'm more confused than before. I don't want to launch Outlook 2016 because that is not what I purchased.

user2153235
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1 Answers1

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I thank the commentors for providing leads that could have solved the problem. I first tried other things that seemed easier, and was able to resolve the problem without resorting to the more sophisticated approaches suggested here. The evolution of the troubleshooting is captured here.

To create Outlook 2019 profile without email, not connected to Microsoft, and thus not requiring sign-in to Microsoft, run Outlook.exe /PIM Profile-Name to create an Outlook profile with no email.

This will not work, however, if you previously created an apparently no-email profile using Control Panel -> Mail. That simply fails to do the job in Outlook 2019, though it worked in previous versions of Outlook. Furthermore, the bad profile created will be the default profile, so Outlook will use it even if you subsequently ran Outlook.exe /PIM Profile-Name. To undo this problem, you have to re-launch Control Panel -> Mail and one of the following:

  • Delete the bad profile
  • Set the option to prompt the user to choose a profile when Outlook starts
  • Set the option to always use Profile-Name

Thanks to Karl Timmermans for this answer.

user2153235
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