Settings don't stick when you click Cancel

From the “I never would have guessed this in a million years” file.

Every now and again, there are problems so obscure that only someone experiencing it would be able to figure it out. This was one of those problems.

Why do I have to clear "leave a copy of message on the server" every time I start Outlook? It works fine, once I uncheck the button, and all emails are deleted form the server, but whenever Outlook is reopened, it is set to leave the mail on the server for 14 days.

After some head scratching and ruling out the usual culprits when changes don’t stick (a registry guard, registry cleaner, or Windows waiting to install updates), I found another forum thread with a couple of people who had the same problem.

One guy confessed that he fixed it by clicking the Next and Finish buttons, rather than Cancel after clicking OK on the Advanced dialog and returning to the Change Account dialog.

I never would have asked HOW he was exiting the dialog but I understand the logic of clicking Cancel on that dialog: you think the OK on the previous dialog saved the changes. Except it didn't, because the parent dialog was canceled.

While I always recommend clicking Next and Finish to exit the dialog, the setting stuck when I X'd the Change Account dialog.

So… the next time you are annoyed by some obscure problem that no one has the solution to, pay close attention to what you are doing and how you're doing it. It's how I solved "The file does not exist" error message when closing the Options dialog in Outlook 2010.

Published September 15, 2014. Last updated on September 18, 2014.