Resolved Compacting mail in OE

indutch · 2011/08/07

I remember that several years ago there were some problems with losing some things when allowing the compaction of Outlook Express. Have those problems been rectified or is it still a **** shoot?

I don't save many e-mails for much longer than a week or so but I've been asked about this and I don't know how to respond. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Mike

PeteC · 2011/08/07

The compaction mechanism was changed some time ago and now provides a backup, albeit in the Recycle Bin

After the compaction process has completed backups of the original files are placed in the Recycle Bin with the .bak extension.

Provided that these are not deleted they can be restored.

FYI and future reference some notes on recovery....

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first close OE and
locate the Message Store in Windows Explorer.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Press the Tab key to highlight the folder
location, then Ctrl+C. Close OE, then Start | Run | Ctrl+V will put the
location in the box - Click OK and you'll see the OE files. Otherwise, write
the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer.

In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these
files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under Start
| Control Panel | Folder Options | View.

In Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the missing, or empty, folder
and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted later once you have
successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the Message Store.

Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the *exact* same
name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak. Eg: If the
file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open the new folder
and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty, continue on to
the next step.

Open the Recycle bin and right click on the bak file for the folder in
question and click Restore. Open the Message Store back up and change the
file extension from .bak to .dbx. Close the Message Store and open OE. The
messages should now be back in the folder.

If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and delete the
old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop.
Click to expand...

Roacher · 2011/08/07

Get Windows Live Mail. You can use static to back up your emails. Windows Live Mail is a much nicer program than OE. I am a packrat on emails. So I ran both of them for about 6 months then saw no problem with WLM.

You can even access all you hotmail accounts on WLM. OE you can not unless you upgraade your hotmail to a POP 3 account.

OE also has dbx files in the system. That is where it stores them.

indutch · 2011/08/18

I apologize for not marking this thread as resolved. I seem to be many times busier since I retired than I ever was when I was on anyone's pay roll. Thanks.

Mike

PeteC · 2011/08/18

Thanks for the update.

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Resolved Compacting mail in OE

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Resolved Compacting mail in OE

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