Outlook Express

Safehands

Outlook Express appears, at first, to be a really easy to use program for Emails. But there are a couple of fatal flaws which make the program very frustrating and which incline me to offer this piece of advise: If you are using it, Stop. Change to another system. If you are buying a computer don't start using OE.
The system offers to compress your files from time to time. If you accept this offer, as I did, you are likely to lose months, or even years of E mails. Some people will tell you 'They are not gone, they are stored somewhere else'. Yea, right! Try to retrieve them, good luck!
You will find it impossible to back up your Outlook Express files, so if your computer breaks down, as happens with a lot of Microsoft stuff, you will lose everything, or at least it will cost you big money to get a professional to do it for you.
I wonder what Microsoft were thinking when they developed Outlook Express?
The mind boggles!

dazberry

Outlook Express hasn't been available since Windows XP - while I never had the issues you had and liked it at the time - I think it's well past its sell by date now...

D.

Safehands

dazberry wrote: »

Outlook Express hasn't been available since Windows XP - while I never had the issues you had and liked it at the time - I think it's well past its sell by date now...
D.

Great to hear that. We have a machine with XP in our office and have lost a year's Emails, all of our inbox for 2013. I have moved away from Microsoft to Apple myself, so I was not aware that it had been discontinued. My advise still stands though, to all XP users, be careful, change to something else.

yoyo

Safehands wrote: »

Great to hear that. We have a machine with XP in our office and have lost a year's Emails, all of our inbox for 2013. I have moved away from Microsoft to Apple myself, so I was not aware that it had been discontinued. My advise still stands though, to all XP users, be careful, change to something else.

People should be looking to move away from XP now as support for it ends in 5 months time. In fact all businesses should have migrated to 7 or 8 by now if they are concerned about security and stability.
Outlook Express is a very old program, that is no longer supported. The last release of it was with IE6 I think, which is many years old. Oulook Express was superseded by Windows Live Mail or Windows Mail in some instances, but unfortunately people didn't seem to realize this.
No matter what platform you are running, it is critical you keep the system up to date, as old software will likely have bugs and if they go unpatched can have these kind of consequences. I do believe that if you backup your Outlook Express files (generally in the App Data folder) and install Windows Live Mail, you'll be able to recover your inbox files, unless they have been corrupted

Nick

BionicRasher

Safehands wrote: »

Outlook Express appears, at first, to be a really easy to use program for Emails. But there are a couple of fatal flaws which make the program very frustrating and which incline me to offer this piece of advise: If you are using it, Stop. Change to another system. If you are buying a computer don't start using OE.
The system offers to compress your files from time to time. If you accept this offer, as I did, you are likely to lose months, or even years of E mails. Some people will tell you 'They are not gone, they are stored somewhere else'. Yea, right! Try to retrieve them, good luck!
You will find it impossible to back up your Outlook Express files, so if your computer breaks down, as happens with a lot of Microsoft stuff, you will lose everything, or at least it will cost you big money to get a professional to do it for you.
I wonder what Microsoft were thinking when they developed Outlook Express?
The mind boggles!

Outlook Express stores email messages in DBX files which are located in the
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{Identity-GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

you will also need to adjust Windows Explorer settings to show hidden objects - the Local Settings folder is hidden from view with the default system settings.

Outlook Express stores message folders in separate .dbx files, one folder per file. To create a backup copy of email, you need to copy all the DBX files to a safe location which is fairly easy to do.

However as per above advise - move to something more modern as OE has had its day.

janeparker

Firstly, check the status of .DBX file at:
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{Identity-GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

If you find that data is damaged then you must have an Outlook Express repair mechanism. This methodology helps you to boost operational speed of mail application.

Regards:
Jane

GarIT

Just use IMAP instead of POP and you can't loose anything.

the_syco

janeparker wrote: »

If you find that data is damaged then you must have an Outlook Express repair mechanism. This methodology helps you to boost operational speed of mail application.

Be prepared to leave it run for a few hours, and NEVER stop it mid-process.

beauf

I use PST files as backup for Outlook. Is there any opensource alternative. Thunderbird development seems to have stopped.