Lost emails

jerry12953

jerry12953

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Jeremy Moore
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Not for the first time, Outlook Express (OE6) has lost all the emails in my Inbox.

Every so often when I close OE I get a message saying "To free up disk space , OE can compact messages"

If I click "yes" it presumably does what it has to do and it's back to normal again. Except when it isn't and everything has disappeared.

If I click "no" I'm harrassed again every time I close down OE.

I've learned to look in the recycling bin for BAK files and restore them. However I can't find an up to date Inbox there this time.

Anybody know what I can do now, and if I can stop OE producing this "compact messages" message?
 
I had a similar problem. Solved it by switching to Thuderbird. Also my ISP is BT and you can select an option to leave the emails on the server. You can then access them via a web browser. So if they do disappear you can recover them form the web server.

Only downside is that you do have to go in and clear out the web server message list every now and again .However it's small effort to safe gaurd those important messages
 
I would suggest gmail, there philosophy is you never have to delete another email you will need a new email addy though :)
 
I haven't used OE or MS mail clients for personal use in a very long time. Tbird is for me. I use gmail as my main email address, any lost emails and they are all there in archive. Also, you can have gmail collect via pop3 from another mail server and collect all your mail via that route. It's also possible to set gmail up to allow you to send email on behalf of another account. I've not tried it, but it might suit your needs, even with the requirement for a new addy.
 
tbird is a mail client see here. It replaces OE and you can import all your settings.
 
jgs001 said:
a mail client
Click to expand...

That's what I meant to call it ....

Thunderbird may be the answer in the medium term but I'm not techie enough to do it myself.

In the meantime if I try to restore an earler Inbox, it asks me if I want to replace one dated today :bang: Which obviously I don't.

But it suggests the lost emails are there somewhere. Any ideas, folks?
 
Hmm, this might work in terms of recovering the emails.. Not quite sure how you could shift them about. If you create a new OE profile, and restore the files to that profile... This ought to allow you to get at the old emails. I'm pretty sure that you could import everything from multiple profiles into tbird.
 
Never had any bother with OE in over 20 years. :D

Open up OE and Goto tools/options/maintenance and click on 'store folder' this will tell you where your messages are stored.

You can change the location if req and might be a good idea to put it somewhere temp to you can keep an eye on it over the next week or so before you decide to change to a different format.
 
admirable said:
Never had any bother with OE in over 20 years. :D

Open up OE and Goto tools/options/maintenance and click on 'store folder' this will tell you where your messages are stored.

You can change the location if req and might be a good idea to put it somewhere temp to you can keep an eye on it over the next week or so before you decide to change to a different format.
Click to expand...

Should I move it to the desktop for now? Or is that too easy .....
 
Sure, move it and keep an eye on it. Are there any lost emails in it?
 
admirable said:
Sure, move it and keep an eye on it. Are there any lost emails in it?
Click to expand...

Isn't there a saying "Out of the frying pan, into the fire"

I found the location of the email files as suggested and moved them to the desktop. I'm not sure what happened but when I looked at outlook express again it seems to have reverted to an earlier date 07/04/2008 when I last lost almost everything! All thats on there is my inbox up to that date. Everything else is empty.:bang:

I think I'll just try a system restore. Should have thought of that earlier....

That didn't work either. I'm hoping I can restore everything from my Carbonite back-up.
 
do a search for .dbx files
 
jerry12953 said:
I'll try that when I get back later on.

Trouble is, I don't know what to do with them when I find them....
Click to expand...

When I got back from town I found all the missing emails sitting obediently in Outlook Express - thanks to Carbonite . :clap::clap::clap:

Not buried in some obsure file on my hard drive or in a dbx file.
 
Not buried in some obsure file on my hard drive or in a dbx file.
Click to expand...

Outlook Express files are .dbx files! ;)
 
Unless you allow OE to compact messages it will lose them. Sometimes it loses them even if you allow it to compact them.

Thunderbird has its faults, too, as do all email clients.

One way to have a fail safe backup with outlook express or any other client is to set up a gmail account.

Then set up an outlook/express/t-bird rule to forward a copy of all important emails to your gmail account upon receipt.

This way you can have a back up of your desktop emails accessible from anywhere in the world.

To be totally sure you won't lose any important emails, print them really important ones out immediately.
 
Tyrone Shoelaces said:
Unless you allow OE to compact messages it will lose them. Sometimes it loses them even if you allow it to compact them.
Click to expand...


Do you have any proof here? That's a pretty bold statement!
 
jerry12953 said:
Not for the first time, Outlook Express (OE6) has lost all the emails in my Inbox.

Every so often when I close OE I get a message saying "To free up disk space , OE can compact messages"

If I click "yes" it presumably does what it has to do and it's back to normal again. Except when it isn't and everything has disappeared.

If I click "no" I'm harrassed again every time I close down OE.

I've learned to look in the recycling bin for BAK files and restore them. However I can't find an up to date Inbox there this time.

Anybody know what I can do now, and if I can stop OE producing this "compact messages" message?
Click to expand...
Restoring .dbx files from any version of Outlook Express it is a dbx repair. The tool is compatible with any Windows OS, it repairs your data in 5 simply steps with the help of Recovery Wizard. Utility can show the restored outlook express data in special program window.
 
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