OE6 cannot delete emails

[sandwedger]

This started out slowly, with just a few emails not being deletable. I tried deleting inbox.dbx, restarting Outlook Express, and the problem persisted anyway. Now it's so bad that I can't delete ANY emails, period. I'm thinking of transferring everything over to Outlook (2003) to see if I can deal with this mess there. Virus scan clean, disk check done three times, no joy. Any clues?

 

[goombawaho]

Try deleting (with outlook express closed) FOLDERS.DBX and then firing it up. I think you tried the right fix with the wrong folder. See the following for more info and reading BEFORE you do that.

Your specific problem - start where the heading says: FOLDERS.DBX

http://www.insideoe.com/files/store.htm

General troubleshooting

http://www.insideoe.com/problems/errors.htm

Compact your message store once you get it functioning if you haven't done that in a while or OE didn't try to do it for you.

 

[sandwedger]

That site is very helpful. I found the answer at

http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#cantdel

and it turns out that all I needed to delete was the delted items folder. I managed to save all the other stuff. Phew. Back to normal!

 

[goombawaho]

You should back up your OE DBX files often. Corruption of OE is always lurking right around the corner if you're not really careful and keep your database files nice and small and compacted. It can be a very treacherous way to store email.