Fix: We Couldn’t Create The Outlook Data File

Office Outlook is an email client that is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite. Since Microsoft Outlook is an email client that helps you manage emails from multiple accounts, it’s not uncommon for users to add various different emails to Outlook. However, users are experiencing an issue where they can’t add a new email to Outlook. You will see a “We couldn’t create the outlook data file” error every time you’ll try to add an email. Obviously, this will prevent you from adding the email and, therefore, use it via Outlook. This problem isn’t specific to a machine because the majority of the users experienced this issue on multiple machines. Also, this problem appears only on adding the Gmail account. The Outlook will work fine with other email providers like Yahoo etc.

What causes the “we couldn’t create the outlook data file” error?

The things that can cause this issue are listed below

Note

Make sure you have allowed Outlook from your email provider side as well. Outlook and various other email clients need proper permissions before they add your email account. You can go to your Sign in & security options from Gmail settings and select App passwords. Now select the appropriate options like your device etc. This option will give you a 16 digit code which should be entered as the password.

Method 1: Use Manage Profiles

Since the problem is most likely caused by a bug in the Microsoft Outlook that prevents you from adding an account via the Add Account option, you can try using the alternative way of adding the account. You can successfully add a new email account via Outlook’s manage profiles window. So, follow the steps given below to add a new account through the manage profiles process.

1. Open Outlook
2. Click File from the top left corner
3. Click Account settings. A new drop-down menu should appear
4. Select Manage Profiles. Confirm any additional prompts
5. Close Outlook to make sure Outlook isn’t blocking any changes

6. A new dialogue box should appear. Select Email accounts

7. Click New

Now, select the appropriate options and add in your email account from here. Everything should work fine once you are done.

Method 2: Using Mail Option (Alternation to Method 1)

This is an alternative option of the method 1. If for some reason, you don’t want to use Outlook to add the email account then you can use the Mail option from the Control Panel as well. This option will get you to step 5 of method 1 and from there the steps are the same.

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type control panel and press Enter

3. Click Small icons from the drop-down menu from View By option
4. Click Mail

5. Select your Outlook profile and click Ok

6. A new dialogue box should appear. Select Email accounts

7. Click New

Now, select the appropriate options and add in your email account from here. That’s it.

Method 3: Disable Simplified Account Creation

If you are trying to add your account via “Connect Outlook to Office 365” wizard in Outlook 2016 then the issue might be caused by that. The account creation process using the Connect Outlook to Office 365 wizard is known as the simplified account creation. Disabling this simplified account creation will replace it with the regular account creation wizard which might solve the issue. We can easily disable the Simplified Account Creation via the Registry editor. Follow the steps given below

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type regedit and press Enter

3. Now navigate to the following path using the left navigation pane:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\setup

4. Locate and click setup from the left pane

5. Right click on an empty space from the right pane, select New then select DWORD (32-bit) Value

6. Name the newly created entry as DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation and press Enter
7. Now double click the newly created key and make sure it has 1 as its value
8. Click Ok

Close the registry editor and try to add the account again.