Outlook Express does not condense or shrink anything.

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, (or possibly the message
store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the location
of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in
Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

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.

Close OE and then 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.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If there
is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, 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/

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am
using my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved emails
from the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I
see but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did I
lose some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few
weeks back? Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved
emails? If found, can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson

Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am using
my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved emails from
the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I see
but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did I lose
some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few weeks back?
Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved emails? If found,
can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson

hoap quye hacen
"Ron Patterson" escribió en el mensaje
m...
Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am
using my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved emails
from the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I
see but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did I
lose some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few
weeks back? Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved
emails? If found, can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson

Any bak files in the Recycle Bin or in the old message store?

In the new OE identity, what happens if you try to import from an OE store
directory and point to your old message store?

If they were backed up to a zip drive, compacting had nothing to do with any
loss there. You would have to copy the contents of the zip drive to your HDD
and remove the Read Only attribute from the dbx files and then import them
from OE. Note that if Folders.dbx was not included in the backup, a
conventional import will fail and the folders will have to be imported
manually.

How to restore individual dbx files:
http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx#imp1

~~~~~~~~~~

A program like OEQB would have made restoring these messages easy. Another
method of saving is to a folder on your HD, and even to CD. Here is an
example.

To backup messages to a readable CD:

Create a folder on your Desktop, then in Outlook Express open the folder
with the messages you want to save. Highlight one message, then Ctrl+A will
highlight them all, (or hold the Ctrl button down while you select only the
messages you want), Now, drag and drop them to the folder on your Desktop.
(Easiest if the folder shortcut is on the Taskbar).

Now you can copy that folder to a CD and you will be able to read the
messages on the CD by double-clicking on them.

The downside of this is that messages that have the same subject will be
overwritten. To avoid this, purchase:

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Bruce - thanks so much - this is all terrific information. I read every
word and every link. I had an HUGE tree of saved emails and I suspect I
lost some of them due to interrupting the compaction (could not remember
that term hence 'condensing') process. I fear I have lost some very
important and valuable information. I am sick over it.

This whole process that OE uses with these unreadable .dbx files makes my
life very difficult. I wish in the future I could copy these emails
someplace else where they would be readable, more secure and not subject
to corruption. Any thoughts?

My problem here is that my #1 hard drive got corrupted and windows xp can
not load. I am now using my #2 hard drive and using Explore to see the
contents of the #1 hard drive. I have spent almost all day there copying
recent data since my last back up from #1 to #2.

I had changed the location of my Store Folder to a folder named Saved
Emails in Program Files/Outlook Express. I continually backed this up to
a zip drive. Now that I am trying to copy them from the zip onto the 2nd
hard drive - I find that most are missing.

It sounds like there is not much I can do about it. Maybe in the future I
will make a Folder in My Docs called Saved Emails and laboriously copy and
paste the 'contents' of important emails to a Word file and save to a
directory tree in this new Saved Emails folder. A lot harder than just
dragging and dropping the email into the tree I had set up within OE. Any
thoughts.

Thank you very much,
Ron Patterson



"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Outlook Express does not condense or shrink anything.

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, (or possibly the message
store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the
location of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in
Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

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.

Close OE and then 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.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If
there is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, 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/

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am
using my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved
emails from the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I
see but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did I
lose some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few
weeks back? Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved
emails? If found, can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson

Bruce - thanks so much - this is all terrific information. I read every
word and every link. I had an HUGE tree of saved emails and I suspect I
lost some of them due to interrupting the compaction (could not remember
that term hence 'condensing') process. I fear I have lost some very
important and valuable information. I am sick over it.

This whole process that OE uses with these unreadable .dbx files makes my
life very difficult. I wish in the future I could copy these emails
someplace else where they would be readable, more secure and not subject to
corruption. Any thoughts?

My problem here is that my #1 hard drive got corrupted and windows xp can
not load. I am now using my #2 hard drive and using Explore to see the
contents of the #1 hard drive. I have spent almost all day there copying
recent data since my last back up from #1 to #2.

I had changed the location of my Store Folder to a folder named Saved Emails
in Program Files/Outlook Express. I continually backed this up to a zip
drive. Now that I am trying to copy them from the zip onto the 2nd hard
drive - I find that most are missing.

It sounds like there is not much I can do about it. Maybe in the future I
will make a Folder in My Docs called Saved Emails and laboriously copy and
paste the 'contents' of important emails to a Word file and save to a
directory tree in this new Saved Emails folder. A lot harder than just
dragging and dropping the email into the tree I had set up within OE. Any
thoughts.

Thank you very much,
Ron Patterson



"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Outlook Express does not condense or shrink anything.

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, (or possibly the message
store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the
location of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in
Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

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.

Close OE and then 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.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If there
is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, 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/

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am
using my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved
emails from the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I
see but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did I
lose some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few
weeks back? Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved
emails? If found, can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson

Thanks again Bruce - I sure am learning a lot - I think I am going to
purchase DBXtract.
Ron


"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Any bak files in the Recycle Bin or in the old message store?

In the new OE identity, what happens if you try to import from an OE store
directory and point to your old message store?

If they were backed up to a zip drive, compacting had nothing to do with
any loss there. You would have to copy the contents of the zip drive to
your HDD and remove the Read Only attribute from the dbx files and then
import them from OE. Note that if Folders.dbx was not included in the
backup, a conventional import will fail and the folders will have to be
imported manually.

How to restore individual dbx files:
http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx#imp1

~~~~~~~~~~

A program like OEQB would have made restoring these messages easy. Another
method of saving is to a folder on your HD, and even to CD. Here is an
example.

To backup messages to a readable CD:

Create a folder on your Desktop, then in Outlook Express open the folder
with the messages you want to save. Highlight one message, then Ctrl+A
will highlight them all, (or hold the Ctrl button down while you select
only the messages you want), Now, drag and drop them to the folder on your
Desktop. (Easiest if the folder shortcut is on the Taskbar).

Now you can copy that folder to a CD and you will be able to read the
messages on the CD by double-clicking on them.

The downside of this is that messages that have the same subject will be
overwritten. To avoid this, purchase:

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Bruce - thanks so much - this is all terrific information. I read
every word and every link. I had an HUGE tree of saved emails and I
suspect I lost some of them due to interrupting the compaction (could not
remember that term hence 'condensing') process. I fear I have lost some
very important and valuable information. I am sick over it.

This whole process that OE uses with these unreadable .dbx files makes my
life very difficult. I wish in the future I could copy these emails
someplace else where they would be readable, more secure and not subject
to corruption. Any thoughts?

My problem here is that my #1 hard drive got corrupted and windows xp can
not load. I am now using my #2 hard drive and using Explore to see the
contents of the #1 hard drive. I have spent almost all day there copying
recent data since my last back up from #1 to #2.

I had changed the location of my Store Folder to a folder named Saved
Emails in Program Files/Outlook Express. I continually backed this up to
a zip drive. Now that I am trying to copy them from the zip onto the 2nd
hard drive - I find that most are missing.

It sounds like there is not much I can do about it. Maybe in the future
I will make a Folder in My Docs called Saved Emails and laboriously copy
and paste the 'contents' of important emails to a Word file and save to a
directory tree in this new Saved Emails folder. A lot harder than just
dragging and dropping the email into the tree I had set up within OE.
Any thoughts.

Thank you very much,
Ron Patterson



"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Outlook Express does not condense or shrink anything.

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, (or possibly the message
store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the
location of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it
in Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

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.

Close OE and then 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.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If
there is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, 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/

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


"Ron Patterson" wrote in message
m...
Outlook Express 6.0
My hard drive got corrupted and will no longer load Win XP. But, I am
using my back up hard drive and want to copy or import all my saved
emails from the bad drive to the good drive.
The problem is when I go in the bad drive to Program Files/Outlook
Express/Saved Emails not all of my emails are there. I can copy what I
see but it is only a small percentage of the emails I have saved. Did
I lose some when Outlook Express 'condensed' or shrunk them again a few
weeks back? Where else might I find this huge missing trove of saved
emails? If found, can I copy them direct to the new drive?
Thanking,
Ron Patterson