lost compacted files in outlook express

Peter - Welcome to the Board

If you are using OE 6 with all the latest updates - I suspect you may be as you were asked to compact (BTW this occurs automatically each time OE has been closed 100x) you should find a backup of the files in the Recycle Bin.

The process to restore is somewhat long winded and is outlined here ...

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...&tid=2e802c03-d2da-4578-9f33-bc985ebaba51&p=1

I suspect that the Sent Items.dbx may be corrupted and the contents may not be recoverable.

BTW there is a 2 Gb limit on the .dbx folders and OE often plays strange long before that limit is reached.

 

Peter,

Were you able to sort it out? Is your face a ... ... ?

Christer

 

Let's review ....

Once you had dragged Sent Items.dbx to the Desktop and reopened OE was there a Sent Items folder present? There should have been as deleted/moved default OE folders are recreated when OE is next opened. There should have been no need to create a folder.

Clearly when a file is restored from the Recycle bin it no longer appears there, but in it's original location. With OE the backups are made during compaction and then deleted - hence the change in extension.

I am puzzled by the instruction to change the .bak extension to .dbx while another file of the same name exists. I would rename the existing Sent Items.dbx to Sent Items Old.dbx if you can - then change the .bak extension on the recovered file to .dbx . BTW OE must be closed while doing this.

The file on your desktop is the original Sent Items dbx file - it will not be seen by OE, but can be restored to OE should the need arise.

 

On a regular basis (once a month), I BackUp my Outlook Express storage folder to a BackUp sub-folder which is auto-named by the BackUp utility to YYMMDD (year-month-day). This means that I have several BackUps and it has happened that, to retrieve an accidentally deleted E-mail, I have had to "temporarily restore" to a previous state. With Outlook Express closed, I simply move the current contents of the storage folder to a different location and copy the contents of the appropriate YYMMDD-folder to the storage folder. When opening OE, I can find the desired E-mail and save it as *.eml. When finished, I close OE and delete the copied contents in the storage folder and move the current contents back.

The above was long winded but the *.bak files in the Recycle Bin fill the same function as my YYMMDD BackUps. The extra step is to rename from *.bak to *.dbx. After opening the Recycle Bin and finding the *.bak files, do not restore them but cut and paste to a different "temporary" folder. After renaming the files, follow the procedure outlined above.

Christer

 

Peter,
did you see my post (#9) above?

You have done several things and have several files with strange names in the storage folder. My computer doesn't speak English but Swedish which makes it more difficult for me to follow.

Anyway, try this:

Create a folder and name it OE-bak, e.g. C:\OE-bak

Open the Recycle Bin and copy all files with the *.bak extension to C:\OE-bak. (I'm a bit lost and don't know if there still are any *.bak files in the Recycle Bin.)

Open the storage location and copy all files with the *.bak extension to C:\OE-bak. (You will possibly be alerted to file replacements if the files also existed in the Recycle Bin and were copied in the previous step.)

Now, tell us what you have in C:\OE-bak!

Christer

 

This is getting somewhat confusing and certainly not running according to the script.

Peter - it seems that you are no further forward in that your Sent Items folder in OE contains only those emails sent since compaction.

Quite honestly I don't know what is going on here and how multiple copies of several files have appeared in the message store.

Christer may be onto something.

The Sent Items.dbx file on the desktop is obviously the original containing only those emails sent since compaction - which is what the 'new' Sent Items folder in OE contains. Do we assume that the .bak file has been restored and did/does not contain sent emails from before compaction - I've no idea.

Incidentally to restore the desktop .dbx file simply right click > Copy and paste into the Message Store and allow an overwrite. This will not get you any further forward as far as I can see.

To sum up .....

 

A storage folder of a working Outlook Express contains several files. These are the default files:

Cleanup.log
Deleted Items.dbx
Drafts.dbx
Folders.dbx
Inbox.dbx
Offline.dbx
Pop3uidl.dbx
Sent Items.dbx
User Created.dbx (any user created folder in OE will have its own *dbx file)

Prior to compacting, these files are copied to the Recycle Bin but with the *.bak extension as opposed to the *.dbx extension. If these files are copied from the Recycle Bin to a temporary folder, their original extension (*.dbx) restored (manually renaming) and finally moved to the Outlook Express storage folder, the compacted files should be overwritten (you will be prompted) and Outlook Express should be back at its "pre disaster condition ".

The problem is that the unhappy user (in this case, Peter) may not be aware of the correct procedure and actions of "trial and error" will make the recovery more difficult or even impossible. I never move the files but copy the files. If I move, I've got one single chance of getting it right. If I copy, I get as many chances as I need.

On my system, there's a D:\Temp\OE-bak folder. Each time when OE has finished compacting, I move the *.bak files from the Recycle Bin to that folder. Should something go wrong, I have the *.bak files securely stored and can empty the Recycle Bin without a second thought. (If the Recycle Bin is littered with files, do a search in it for files with the *.bak extension.)

Christer

 

Hi Christer

Slightly off topic, but FWIW my procedure is this .....

My OE Message Store is located on a separate partition - that partition is backed up automatically every hour to another internal hard drive which in turn is backed up manually to an external hard drive on a weelky basis. That said I normally leave the .bak files in the Recycle bin for a day before deleting.

 

Hi Pete!

Our approaches differ but the end result is the same ... ... we have our backups in one or two places.

By the way, speculating mode ON:

I believe that these files originate from the attempts of renaming "Sent Items.bak" to "Sent Items.dbx" when that file already existed.

The file "Folders.dbx" keep track of things and is read by Outlook Express every time it gets started. Folder deletions or creations in OE are logged in it and the attempt to rename may have been logged as "Sent Items#.dbx" (and two attempts were made.

Speculating mode OFF!

Christer

 

I used the same method I posted back in August last year with a result, but not without a lot of hassle alomng the way ......

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=66785

Post #14 was the crucial one.

Peter

Try it if you like, but first copy all the .dbx files to a safe location in case it all goes pear shaped.

 

Yes, creating a folder, using a "fresh name" seems to work and is good thinking because merging the two inbox.dbx files by importing the messages in one into the other often seems to fail. Also, to always work with copies of the files is wise, never the original files.

Could it be some kind of "system files protection" not allowing the renaming but moving one inbox.dbx-file out and a different inbox.dbx-file in is OK?

Christer

 

I agree! It would be better to create an "Outlook Express Bak" folder and each time compression happens, the files in it get overwritten. In addition to that, generating a message to the user, telling him/her how to handle the *.bak files would be a good idea, rather than letting him/her search high and low for information when the proverbial "you know what" hits the fan.

Christer