Several months ago when I closed OE6 it asked me if I want to compact
emails. I accidentally hit yes and then stopped it after a couple of minutes
when it seemed to get stuck. After this, emails between 2/14/05 and 12/15/05
were missing (and I think it happened on 12/15). I couldn't figure out what
the problem was until recently I saw that stopping the compacting process
might've caused those emails to disappear. Are those emails gone or is
there some way of bringing them back?

TIA.

This is my general reply to your message. Since it has been that long, I
wouldn't expect much in the way of results. FYI, if you never compact, you
will lose your messages eventually anyway. So the accident wasn't saying
*Yes*, it was disrupting the process.

The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), and bloated
folders. More on that below.

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovery tool:

DBXpress run in Disk Mode is the best chance to recover messages:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

A general warning if you don't want to lose your messages in the futu

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become
corrupted. Create your own user defined folders for storing mail and move
your mail to them. Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created
folders under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

And backup often.

Backup and Resto

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/backup/

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Several months ago when I closed OE6 it asked me if I want to compact
emails. I accidentally hit yes and then stopped it after a couple of
minutes when it seemed to get stuck. After this, emails between 2/14/05
and 12/15/05 were missing (and I think it happened on 12/15). I couldn't
figure out what the problem was until recently I saw that stopping the
compacting process might've caused those emails to disappear. Are those
emails gone or is there some way of bringing them back?

TIA.

Why it happens:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/probl...s.htm#mailgone
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovering data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DBXtract
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx

DBXtend (additional functionality)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtend/Default.aspx

DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

OEX (OE Enhancement Program)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEX/Default.aspx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Avoid Such Corruption in Futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Disable Background Compacting [N/A in SP2] and frequently perform a manual
compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/maintain.htm.

- WinXP SP2 only: Do not shut down your machine while Windows is
automatically compacting your message store.

- Your anti-virus application's email scanning feature can also cause such
corruption. Disable it. It provides no additional protection.
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE, Shell/User, Security), Aumha.org VSOP, DTS-L.org

Zen Cohen wrote:
Several months ago when I closed OE6 it asked me if I want to compact
emails. I accidentally hit yes and then stopped it after a couple of
minutes when it seemed to get stuck. After this, emails between 2/14/05
and 12/15/05 were missing (and I think it happened on 12/15). I couldn't
figure out what the problem was until recently I saw that stopping the
compacting process might've caused those emails to disappear. Are those
emails gone or is there some way of bringing them back?

TIA.

For the future make sure you do points 2 and 3 here
(www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx) and backup frequently as this happens a lot.

You might get something with the DBXpress extract from disk function, but
given the delay involved its unlikely you'd recover all of them.

steve

"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Several months ago when I closed OE6 it asked me if I want to compact
emails. I accidentally hit yes and then stopped it after a couple of
minutes when it seemed to get stuck. After this, emails between 2/14/05
and 12/15/05 were missing (and I think it happened on 12/15). I couldn't
figure out what the problem was until recently I saw that stopping the
compacting process might've caused those emails to disappear. Are those
emails gone or is there some way of bringing them back?

TIA.