Outlook stuck loading profile with all profiles deleted

Issue

Microsoft Outlook 365 stuck “Loading Profile” message and never starts. Normally, the quickest way to resolve this is to delete the affected profile from Control Panel > Mail > Profiles and then create a new profile (warning: this will delete locally cached email data).

However, in this particular case, even with all the profiles deleted, Outlook was still loading a non-existing ghost profile…

Resolution

The issue was resolved by deleting the affected profile from the registry:

• Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Profiles
• Delete the affected profile key.
  
• Restart Outlook.

November 2023
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Outlook 365