I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders Folder
can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group

"Willy" wrote in message
...
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group


Don't worry about Folders not being compacted.

Go to the Inbox and click View | Current View | Show All Messages.

--
Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM
Do not reply with email

Your last question first.

Compacting hangs on Folders.dbx after installing SP3 for XP:

Until, and *if*, a patch is made available, compact your folders manually.
The counter will be reset to zero, and a manual compact won't hang.

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.

If you get it the habit of compacting before the 100th closing, (i.e. once a
week, or so), you will never see the prompt again.
~~~~~

Your first question.

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, or SP3, 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


"Willy" wrote in message
...
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group

I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost.

View | Current view | Show all messages (checked?)

...when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder
can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??

When this happens again, just close OE, reopen it & compact all folders
manually (ALT+F+F+F).

General OE Caveats:

- 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 [removed in WinXP SP2] and frequently
perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- WinXP SP2 only: Do not cancel Automatic Compacting, should it occur, and
do not attempt to close OE via Task Manager or shutdown your machine if
Automatic Compacting is taking place.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection,
and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

QP
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/QP
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/

Willy wrote:
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder
can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.

No help Frank. I don't do Compacting, I'm thinking OE does it automatically
after X number of closing OE.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group

"Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM" wrote in message
...
"Willy" wrote in message
...
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group


Don't worry about Folders not being compacted.

Go to the Inbox and click View | Current View | Show All Messages.

--
Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM
Do not reply with email

Found them in Recycle Bin as Inbox.bak. Renamed as Inbox.dbx and copy to
store Folder, All okay now. Have had Auto Compact in background disabled
since OE5. Anti-virus does not scan as you all recommend.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group

"Willy" wrote in message
...
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group

"Auto Compact in background" is not included in a fully patched version
WinXP SP2, Willy, so you can't disable it.

If you adhere to the caveats posted in other replies to this thread, you
should never see the new Automatic Compacting functionality in WinXP SP2
rear its ugly head...or lose the contents of any folder again.

Willy wrote:
Found them in Recycle Bin as Inbox.bak. Renamed as Inbox.dbx and copy to
store Folder, All okay now. Have had Auto Compact in background disabled
since OE5. Anti-virus does not scan as you all recommend.

"Willy" wrote in message
...
I was making changes to Message Store Folder & some how the contents of
my
Inbox were lost. I searched recycle Bin & anything there was from
2006-2007. I lost contents of 2 other Folders but was able to Restore
them
from Recycle Bin. One other issue is when OE does the Auto Compacting of
Folders, I get a Window that says something to the effect the Folders
Folder can't be compacted cause it may be in use by another app.??
Have I lost those Emails for good or any way to find them.
--
Thanks, Bill
Post replies back to News Group