No Personal Archive in Outlook 2010 with an old MSDN Key

Today I wasted several hours troubleshooting why I could not see the Personal Archive in Office Outlook 2010.

I was sure that this user in my new test environment had a Personal Archive; the archive was visible in Outlook Web App. I verified that I had installed the correct Microsoft Office version – Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010. There were no error messages, but I could not see the archive mailbox!

Finally I found the blog article “No Access to Online Archive in Outlook 2010 Professional Plus?”, written by Jeff Guillet. This article explains the issue.

I used a MSDN license key that was generated this spring when Office 2010 was made available on MSDN. If you use this key then you cannot get access to the Personal Archive.

You have to generate a new key on MSDN and change the product key of the existing installation (Control Panel > Programs and Features > Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 > Change > Enter a product key).

Afterwards you can start to use the Personal Archive in Outlook 2010.