Emails in my inbox gone!

This is really bizzare. Using Outlook Express checked my emails this morning, all is fine. Go back later in the afternoon, fire up Outlook and darn, all my inbox emails are all gone. Whats bizzare about this is that I did get the "Welcome to Outlook Express" email you get when you create an email account in Outlook, but everything else that was in there previous had disappeared, deleleted maybe, I have no idea.

Has this happened to anyone, or know of it happening before ???

Tried to re-load outlook, re-boot PC, but no sign of my inbox emails.

Anyway I can restore them if they have been deleted???

Cheers

 

Hi Steve

I already looked in the folder you mentioned, and saw inbox.dbx in there but when i saw the size of it (59bytes - exactly the same as outbox.dbx, which is always empty) I knew I had lost everything inside my inbox.

I'm baffled as to how it could have become corrupt when it was fine in the morning.

I guess now my question will extend to, is there any way I can recover the old inbox.dbx file which contained my emails.

Fortunately all the folders in Outlook remained unscaved!!

 

Thats right, there is only one "inbox.dbx" file.

No haven't created a new user profile.

What I meant was that all my personsal folders i created and store various emails in Outlook were untouched (ie not corrupt), so most of my important email were ok. Unfortunately i had several emails that I wanted to keep that were in the inbox folder that I had not moved to certain folders in Outlook. Only the emails in the inbox were affected.
I don't know if importing will help me, as there is nothing to import. They seem to have been deleted, but i will take another look and see if that works.

Do I need to creat another user profile in Outlook??

 

It may be that for some unknown reason, OE has decided to create a new Store Folder and use it. If that's the case, your email files are still there and OE has to be told to go back to using the old store folder.

To do that, first you have to locate the old store folder. In Start>Search, tell it to search for "inbox.dbx." That will find all inbox.dbx files on your computer (assuming "Show hidden files" is checked and and "Hide protected operating system files" and "Hide extensions for known files types" are unchecked in My Computer>Tools>Folder Options>View tab).

Check the file sizes of all the "inbox.dbx" files it finds. The largest one is most likely the one you want.

The easiest way to change OE's store folder is to right click in the Search Results pane on the inbox.dbx you think is the correct one, left click on "Open Containing folder." Then in the address bar copy the path to that folder (or just write it down).

Open OE, go to Tools>Options>Maintenance tab>Store folder button and replace the path that's there with the one you copied (or wrote down). Click OK. Close OE, reopen OE and see if things are back to the way they should be.

 

thanks Miz, will give it a shot.

 

Usually when OE changes its store folder ALL email in the old folder will be left behind, however still worth doing a search on inbox.dbx. Also worth looking in the Deleted items folder in OE just in case.

There are quite a few apps out there for recovering lost email. A quick google turned up several like these
http://www.oemailrecovery.com/recovering-lost-email.html
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/Recover_deleted_email.html
http://www.recover-outlook-email.com
I’ve never tried any such app so can’t comment on or vouch for their success rate. A bit of hunting might turn up a free one. Make a weekly copy of the store folder as backup.

 

Thanks guys, tried basically everything outlined above but to no avail. Looks like they are gone for good.

I now have created a backup of all folders and files on a separate HD..

Thanks again

 

Maco88--Not to get your hopes up too much, but you might explore "undeleting" deleted files. (They are still on the hard drive until you overwrite them.) Download Restoration to a floppy or external drive and run from there (that is so you do not write to the hard drive you are trying to restore)
http://www.webattack.com/get/restoration.html
Or you could try a $5 investment in DBXtract
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx
but you have already said your Inbox folder looks pretty empty.

 

Thanks WJim, the more important emails I had in the inbox at the time (financial statements & trade contracts) I have been able to get re-sent to me, the rest I think were mostly of friends, and I was able to work out what a few of them were and who from, from my "sent" folder.

Thanks for all your help, something like this has never happened to me before.

 

Maco88--For my very small input, you are welcome. Glad to hear the good news. You were resourceful in putting back most of the pieces.