Backup and restore Categories in Outlook

There is no option in Outlook itself to backup or restore the “Master Category List”.
However, you can still workaround this limitation by assigning all your Categories to a single items and save that item outside of Outlook. You can then use this item to restore your Categories, even to another mail profile or share it with a colleague.

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 store the Master Category list in the mailbox or pst-file itself so if you backup your pst-file, your Categories will be backed up as well.
This of course doesn’t allow you to easily share your Categories or use it in another mail profile. To allow for this you can use the following method;
Backup

1. Create an new Note item (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+SHIFT+N).
2. Write “Categories” in it to give it a name.
3. Close the Note item.
4. Switch to your Notes folder (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+5).
5. Right click on it and choose Categorize-> All Categories…
6. Select all the Categories which you want to backup.
7. Save the Note outside of Outlook as an msg-file Outlook via File-> Save as… or by dragging it out of Outlook and into an Explorer folder or onto your Desktop. By default it will be called Categories.msg

Restore

1. Open your Notes folder (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+5).
2. Drag & drop the Categories.msg file from Explorer into the Notes folder.
3. Switch back to the Mail Navigation (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+1).
4. Right click on the top of your mailbox folder set and choose Properties.
5. Click the button “Upgrade to Color Categories…”.
   Outlook will scan your mailbox for items with Categories which aren’t in the Master Category List yet and will add them. 

Command line alternative

You can also start Outlook with the /remigratecategories switch to achieve the same result;

• Windows XP
  Start-> Run; outlook.exe /remigratecategories
• Windows Vista and Windows 7
  Start-> type; outlook.exe /remigratecategories