Resolved Cannot delete some emails?

This problem just cropped up. At first I thought it was an issue from one specific sender but then it turns out that the problem is not related to a particular sender.

I am running XP w/SP3 and using OE6.

Some emails, not all, will not delete from my inbox. (seems to be about 40-50% of them. I cannot right click and delete, use the big red X in the tool bar or drag and drop them to the Deleted folder. I get a message box that states the "The Selected Message cannot be deleted, an error has occured "

The only thing that I can do is to drag and drop the emails into my Sent Items folder.

At this rate, my folders will become a mess.

Any suggestions?

 

Been ages since I used OE6, but I think your inbox file is getting too large [anything above 2 GB can be a pain]. Compact your files.

 

I only moved the emails that could not be deleted (to the sent items folder) because that is the only thing that I could do with them.

Otherwize, I went to follow your instructions, re creating a folder called Inbox old. Two issues here. The "select all" option is not live for any of the folders. That means I would have to hold control and individually select all emails. Why would that be?

 

I did do the search for *.dbx files. There are 7 Inbox.dbx files all within c:/documents and settings/family/local settings/applications data/identities but all with different extensions with 5 groups of digits and or letters and varying content size ranging from 137 kb to 38,000 kb's.

Which should I delete?

I am wondering if deleting the inbox will remedy the situation. Even after I move emails to another folder (inboxOld or Sent items), the ones that would not delete before, still will not delete.

 

Ah yes, of course. I will check out some of the other ones although they get virtually no traffic.

In the mean time, should I just delete them all anyway?

A couple of the identities only had a few emails each. They were all from before the time that this problem began to appear. They all deleted. (about 15 emails between two of the other identities)

I only have 5 identities currently listed so I think a couple of the Inbox.dbx files are from a couple of identities that had been deleted previously.

 

Ok, I moved all inbox emails, from all identities then deleted the Inbox.dbx files. I went back and researched to confirm that they were gone.

I then opened the primary identity and indeed there was a new inbox there. I went back and searched again, and yes there was now only one out of the previous seven present(albeit, at a much smaller KB size)

I then moved a couple of email from inboxold back over to the new inbox and they would not delete.

Any new ideas? I really do appreciate your attempts to help.

 

Thanks all for your participation in my problem. All is working now but I am not really sure what happened. Since the time I posted this, my computer got a nasty Master Boot Record infection. Sometime during that episode, OE quit receiving any mail at all.

Once I got the MBR issue cleared up, I went back to the compounded OE problem. I deleted all the identities except my main one, then on the advice of Comcast, I went to change my password in attempt to, at least start getting mail on OE.

Before changing my password and while reading mail online at Comcast, I went to delete an open message. A note popped up that said "there are no records to delete ". Puzzled, I went back to the inbox and all the emails had disappeared???

I then went ahead and changed my password while I was there. I then opened OE to register the new Comcast password. Low and behold, as OE opened, a flood of emails began to download. That is where the emails had gone.

I immediately closed OE and reopened it. It needed my new password which I gave it. OE successfully authorized with no new emails.

I then went and tried to delete some of the new messages and Voila! All that I tried successfully deleted. I might also add that I had previously created two new folders in attempt to keep my OE inbox from getting loaded up. I kept moving emails that I did not want to keep to one of them and ones that I did want to keep to the other.

Once OE started to work, the contents of those two new folders disappeared.

I do not have a clue as to what transpired and why.