You can't turn off the compacting feature, but if you manually compact
before 100 closings, it will reset the counter in the registry.

As far as saving messages outside of OE, I find this a easy way.

One way to save an entire folder to your HDD quickly is this. You can store
them any place you want, but I'll use the Desktop as an example.

Right click on the Desktop | New | Folder. Create as many as needed, and for
now, put them on the left side of the Desktop.

Open OE and drag the window to the right enough to see the folder you
created on the Desktop. Open the folder in OE and click on one message.
Ctrl+A will highlight them all. Left click on the messages and drag them to
the folder on the Desktop.

You can also be selective by holding the Ctrl key and just highlight certain
messages and then drag them to the folder on the Desktop.

Once you confirm they are in these folders, you can delete them from OE if
you wish, and follow up with a Compact All Folders.

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
Imperial Beach, CA

"Kate in Nashville" wrote in
message ...
It worked! Thank you so much! That was much easier than I thought if
would
be, and now I don't think I've lost a single email. I appreciate your
help
very much.

On an ongoing basis, any thoughts on the best way to save emails that I'd
like to keep to access if needed but don't necessarily want to keep within
OE? And it seems like other things I'm reading suggest to turn off the
auto
archive / compress feature and run it manually on a regular basis. Do you
agree?

Again, thank you so much!

"IMAGEREP" wrote:

I think you can still recover. here is what I did, but you'l need to
move
your files back into the OE store location first:

Importing single dbx files into OE:
To restore, create a new folder in OE5 or 6 (call it archiv1, for
example)
and access it once. Then close OE and find archiv1.dbx in the OE Store
Folder
and delete the file you just created. Rename the old file you want to
restore
with the new name you had created (archiv1.dbx). Open OE and the messages
you
wanted to restore will be accessible via opening that archiv1 folder.

good luck!

"Kate in Nashville" wrote:

Just found in another posting where I also needed to restore the
"folders"
file, and after doing that step I'm back in business. However, I had
some
emails from the last month that I moved to some temporary folders while
I was
trying to work all this out and now those files haven't been restored.
Again
I can see the files in the message store list, but they are not showing
up
when I open OE. It's not the end of the world if I can't get these
back b/c
I'm just so happy to have all the others I feared I'd lost. But, if
it's an
easy fix I'd like to know how.

Thank you in advance.

"Kate in Nashville" wrote:

Bruce:

New post here, but same topic so if it's okay I thought I'd post
directly to
you. Like this inquiry, I also lost my email folders when we
accidentally
stopped the compacting process. I went through the same exercise of
finding
the folders in the recycle bin, restoring them, and renaming them
from .bak
to .dbx. It seems to have only partially worked - my problem is that
the
files restored and I can see the files in the message store, however,
the
folders are not showing up when I open OE. Other folders in the same
message
store do show up in OE just fine (the ones that did not have problems
during
compacting). Any thoughts?

"Bruce Hagen" wrote:

You're welcome & Glad it's fixed. OE and spam programs have not had
a good
history of working well together. You'll want to disable e-mail
scanning as
well. It is a redundant layer of protection an can cause a
multitude of
problems.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
Imperial Beach, CA

"IMAGEREP" wrote in message
...
All now corrected and back in business!
I followed the directions of creating new names in OE, going into
the file
folder and deleting the newly created name, then renaming the old
folder
to
the new name.

THANKS!
PS must have occurred due to my new PCCILLIN Virus/Spam
installation.
That's about when it disappeared.
Imagerep

"Bruce Hagen" wrote:

You /did/ open Deleted Items and check? Try these instructions
for
importing
single folders. If that doesn't work, keep reading.

See this for message recovery techniques:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

***********************************************

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

Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

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

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

Recovery tools:

If you are running XP/SP2, and are fully patched, then you
should have a
backup of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, copied as bak
files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first close
OE and
locate the Message Store in Windows Explorer.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the
location of
your Outlook Express files. Press the Tab key to highlight the
folder
location, then Ctrl+C. Close OE, then Start | Run | Ctrl+V will
put the
location in the box - Click OK and you'll see the OE files.
Otherwise,
write
the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer.

In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To
view these
files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders
under
Start
| Control Panel | Folder Options | View.

In Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the missing, or
empty,
folder
and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted later once you
have
successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the Message Store.

Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the
*exact*
same
name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak.
Eg: If the
file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open
the new
folder
and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty,
continue on to
the next step.

Open the Recycle bin and right click on the bak file for the
folder in
question and click Restore. Open the Message Store back up and
change the
file extension from .bak to .dbx. Close the Message Store and
open OE.
The
messages should now be back in the folder.

If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and
delete
the
old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop.

If you do not have bak copies of your dbx files in the Recycle
Bin, then:

DBXpress run in Extract From 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 to help avoid this 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.

Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a
redundant
layer
of protection that eats up CPUs, slows down sending and
receiving, and
causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs, account
setting changes
and has even been responsible for lose of messages. Your
up-to-date A/V
program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more,
see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

And backup often.

Backup and Resto

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

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

And this good one click backup program.

Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB):

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
Imperial Beach, CA

"IMAGEREP" wrote in message
...
Strange thing happened today. I have many folders in OE to
store
emails.
One
folder (which has about a dozen sub-folders) suddenly
disappeared. I
looked
into the Stored Folder in Drive C where all these folders are
naturally
stored by the system and by a pleasant surprise I see all the
.dbx
folders,
including the name of the folder now gone as well as all the
sub-folders.
How can I get these back to appear in OE? Any idea what
happened? I
know
I
did not accidently delete the folder.
Thanks!