Outlook Express Toasted Saved Messages How to get them back ?

[weasyl]

Ok Folks, I am at my wits end via Outlook Express Issue.

Outlook Express asked me to compact messages to save space.
I have done this in the past with no problems. However
this time, half of my saved email folders went poof.
I can no longer see them in the list of local folders in
outlook express.

When I manually navigate from "my computer" to the actual folder that the .dbx files are stored in, I can see them
there. (eg: fun messages.dbx)

When I try to retreive them using outlook express repair
tool or a similar program, I have it locate the file, hit
retreive or restore and it scans it in less than a second
and comes up with nothing, nothing happens. Strange thing
is, the files do have sizes of different KB's and MB's.
Doesn't that mean there should be data in them and that it
is not erased ?

Let me know what you think. Can I remove outlook express
and re-install without overwriting my old (albeit damaged)
messages ?

Thanks for taking the challenge !

Weasyl

 

[smah]

With OE closed, delete (or rename) folders.dbx. You will lose your folder stucture (subfolder levels), but when you start OE, all folders should reapear. You might just need to move them to get back to your original folder structure if you had sub-folders.

 

[weasyl]

Hi smah,

I deleted the folders.dbx file, but no messages
came back. There were actually two folders.dbx files in two different folders. I deleted both. Do I need to reboot perhaps ?

Thanks for helping.

 

[smah]

You shouldn't need to reboot. 'Folders.dbx' keeps the list of folders that OE uses. When this folder is deleted and OE is restarted, OE rebuilds folders.dbx based on the the .dbx files it finds. If this didn't work and OE's import function won't work, then you have damaged files or the files are not in the correct store directory. I don't know what 'repair tools' that you've tried, but your best chance for recovery will be DBXtract or DBXpress

 

[Mirik]

Hi,

I'm currently experiencing a similar problem after compacting, strangely enough only one folder was affected, and only all the e-mail from after 10-2004 in thats folder was deleted.

However with the database extracters I can't find the messages in the DBX files they where in previously.

I'm very interested in knowing wether these e-mails (some thousands) are still recoverable, and why they got deleted by the compacting process in the first place.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mirik]

weasyl, sorry to hog your thead by the way. I hope someone can answer and help us. Also excuse my spelling, frustrated right now!

 

[weasyl]

Not a problem Mirik,

Sounds like the exact same damn problem.
What boggles my mind is that some files were affected
and some were not, AND that the .dbx files are still
there.

I haven't had a chance to try extracting with the new
program that smah suggested. I will keep you posted.

SMAH. If I re-install outlook express will it delete
all current messages saved there ? Can I save them in
another location and import them perhaps ?

Weasyl

 

[smah]

weasyl, depending on your OS, you should be able to reinstall OE without problems, but I would definately make a copy of the entire mail store before doing so for later import if needed. The OE mail store is the entire folder where the .dbx files are located. Unfortunately, you won't recover your mail by doing so. The .dbx format is not as robust as it should be for the way people use it. When the files become large or contain many records (individual messages) problems start to happen. OE's background compaction suffers problems if it's running when other events occur with your computer. The programs that I recommended were written by an MS-MVP that is very involved with OE's database structure.