Missing emails in Outlook Express

Yorky

I opened Outlook Express 6 (Windows XP SPII) today and all of the messages in the 'Inbox' were missing. (I'd had to forcibly shut down the PC yesterday by depressing the CPU button as the normal shut-down process wasn't responding)

I located the Store Folder and the Inbox.dbx file , then File>Import>Messages>OE6>location of file but it only restored some of the messages with significant numbers missing.

These are important messages and I need to retrieve them. Does anyone know how to do retrieve and restore the missing messages?

Thanks in advance.

Antar Bolaeisk

How were you previously getting your e-mails, imap/pop/exchange? There's a small chance they might be recoverable at source which increases if you weren't using pop.

Gadgetman496

Outlook Express carries out a cleanup every now and then to free up disk space and it throws a lot of stuff to the recycle bin while processing. If you interrupted that during shutdown your missing mail could still be in the bin.

ArtyM

Outlook Express stores emails by folder.
Each folder has a corresponding .dbx file in the store folder.
A file called folders.dbx contros how these are displayed.

Outlook Express regularly 'compacts' your store - moving items to the recycle bin and adding .bak extension - these can be retrieved by dragging them from the bin to the store folder, changing the extension to .dbx and deleting the folders file (or preferably renaming it) and restarting OE.

Check your store folder for .bak files also, if any are there, rename them to a .dbx extension - but with a unique filename, rename the folders file and restart.
One consequence of renaming the folder file is that you will lose folder structure i.e. subfolders will no longer be subfolders.

Check file sizes, and file dates- these should give you an indication of which file is relevant.

I hope this helps.

paulheu

Unless you set Outlook Express to remove mail from the server they should still be there.. What's the mail server you use (the part after @)?

There might be a web interface for it as well..

janeparker

Hi Yorky,
Closing Outlook Express in improper way can damage your DBX file. You need to scan DBX file for errors with a DBX recovery tool. Such tool also helps in locating and repairing any corruption issue in the DBX file. As a reference see this tutorial - http://www.slideshare.net/Smithgrace/strategies-to-recover-dbx-file . With this tool one can recover all folders easily.

Regards :
Jane

verlajordan

I hope this helps

If the dbx file is no longer shown in quarantine, I have no better solution than what you have been advised and already tried.

Try Free Trail Version Demo software for here:- http(:)//www(.)pcrecoverytools.com/outlook-express-recovery(.)html