Need Help recovering deleted OE6 emails

If you can see the *.dbx folders then DBXtract should be able to extract the files from them - they can then be reincorporated in OE ....

Quote "DBXtract HELP

Input
When the program starts, the input path (source of files to extract) is loaded with the current Outlook Express Identities, and the list of files in that directory is loaded in to the filename list box under the input path.


Choose the Input Path, select another Identity path from the drop down list, or use the Browse button to choose another directory for input. Once the files (.dbx and .dbt) are loaded into the listbox, then check the box next to the filename to include it on the list for extraction. Multiple files can be selected and the files will be processed sequentially.

Action

Select whether or not you wish to Save by message subject (messages of the same subject will be saved as subject(1), subject(2), subject(3), etc.) or to save with a file prefix, which can be set by typing into the text box (default prefix is File). Messages are extracted in the order they appear in the dbx file, which may be totally unrelated to the temporal sequence of the messages. Some subjects contain unusual characters and if they cannot be incorporated into a filename, then that message will get a filename of "Problem Subject ".

Select the Remove Re: checkbox to remove the Re: from the subject line when saving by Subject.

Select the Save messages under folder name option to save the messages under a directory named for the folder from which they originated. For instance, extracting from the inbox will result in messages saved under the output path \ inbox directory.

Select Recover mode for manually deleted items to recover messages deleted from the deleted items folder or Shift-Deleted from other folders. With the DBX files, Microsoft chops each message into 512 byte pieces. When a message is deleted from the deleted items folder (that has not yet been compacted), then OE removes the first 4 bytes of each piece, so it is not possible to recover a message in its entirety. However, with this version of DBXtract, one can recover from the deleted items.dbx file, such pieces that are still there and reassemble what is left of the pieces. A set of text (txt) files will then be extracted into the output directory. For the sake of completeness, all fragments will be recovered. A lot will have the filename NoSubject appended by a number. Most of these will be redundant and can be deleted (Make sure the by Subject check box is checked when using the Recover Mode feature, so one can distinguish between them). Images and other attachments will be incomplete and likely irrecoverable, but text and message headers should be largely intact. These txt files can be renamed to eml files, but they will not be completely intact for the above reason.

Output

Select an output directory to which the messages (eml or nws) files will be extracted. The default directory is the directory wherein DBXtract.exe resides. One can use the Browse button to change this directory. If the option to save messages under folder name is selected, a subdirectory named after the folder will be created under this directory, and the messages will be extracted to this subdirectory. The Output path must exist or the Extract button will not appear.

Extraction

Upon clicking the Extract button, the program reads in the dbx file and then extracts the messages into the designated folder. The program can be aborted in progress by clicking on the Cancel button. The program can be terminated by clicking the X box in the upper right hand corner.

IMPORTANT: While the program only reads the dbx files, it is important that OE is closed when the program is in use. This is especially true if one has background compaction turned on under Tools | Options | Maintenance. If OE is open and is accessing the dbx file at the same time as the program is, it is possible the file could become corrupted (or the entire message store could be). It is very important then to make sure OE is closed. The program itself does not modify any dbx files or any files associated with OE.
It is unwise to run the program from the Desktop, if one allows for the default output path to be the Desktop, as then all messages will be extracted there, and if the file contains several hundred or thousand messages, then the Desktop will be overfilled. It is best to run the program from an empty directory or designate the output path to such.

DBX files can get rather large and the larger the file the more slowly it will run. It is best to compact the dbx files in OE using File | Folder | Compact to minimize their size, but it is not necessary to compact them in order for the program to function accurately. With uncompacted folders, however, more messages or some partial messages may be extracted than the number that OE indicates are in the folder. DBXtract is designed as a recovery tool, so expect many false positives in the extraction process. Most of these will have a filename of "No Subject" or will show no date or the current date when reincorporated into OE.

Some relatively meaningless numbers are displayed under the Progress label to indicate that the program is active. In some cases, with large dbx files, the program will take a very long time. In such circumstances Task Manager will show that the program is not responding. If the progress numbers continue to change, however, the program is active, and one should just wait.

After extraction, the eml and nws files can be reincorporated into OE as follows:

1. Create a new folder in OE and then open OE to that folder so that the blank header list is visible.
2. Open Windows Explorer to the directory containing the eml and nws files and select the files you want to reincorporate into OE.
3. Right click on the selected files in Windows Explorer and hold the mouse button down and drag the files over top of the header list in the open OE folder and release the mouse button.
4. OE will then reincorporate the files into that folder as messages.


An enhanced version of DBXtract (DBXpress) is available and is more reliable, has more features, is much faster, and can extract messages from drives whose partition tables have become corrupt or which have been formatted.

DBXtract is Copyright 1999-2004 © Stephen L. Cochran, Ph.D. END OF QUOTE