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April 6th, 2011, 10:35 AM
#1
Lost Inbox Emails After Compacting Outlook Express
The computer is running Windows XP Pro and is using Outlook Express 6. Compacting of emails to free up space was done and now a bunch of read messages in my Inbox are gone. How can I get these back?
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April 6th, 2011, 10:44 AM
#2
Restore from backup. Compacting should never be done without backing up first. Later versions of Outlook Express were supposed to do this automatically, but there is no guarantee.
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April 6th, 2011, 10:53 AM
#3
Could you give me details how to restore from the backup?
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April 6th, 2011, 11:02 AM
#4
ginky4 -
By now, you should have a backup program in place for your data. If not, it is certainly time to consider preparing and implementing one. If this is someone else's computer you are working on, the standard practice should be to backup their files before doing anything else.
Possibly useful links:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...0-bf1cedbc88c4
http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/i...002089001.html
http://www.emailadept.com/outlook-ex...compacting.htm
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April 6th, 2011, 02:54 PM
#5
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April 6th, 2011, 06:07 PM
#6
I got the problem fixed. Here is what I did. I opened up Outlook Express and went to Tools, Options, Maintenance. I then clicked onto the tab called Store Folder which gave me a directory. I then copied and pasted that directory into the Run command window and then hit ok. That took me into a bunch of Outlook Express .dbx and .bak files.
You now need to close Outlook Express. I went to the inbox.dbx file and renamed that to inboxold.dbx I then took the inbox.bak file and renamed that to inbox.dbx The inbox.bak file was dated to yesterday's date when everything was working. You can then close out of that directory once you make those changes. I then relaunched Outlook Express and all of my missing emails were back.
That's basically how you restore your inbox off of a back up. It can also be done for the Sent and Deleted folders.
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April 6th, 2011, 06:16 PM
#7
Excellent. You were lucky. You should have bought a lottery ticket also while you were working on this.
Of course, the restored .dbx files are once again not compacted now. I would suggest copying them to another storage medium before attempting another Compact operation.
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April 6th, 2011, 08:12 PM
#8
ginky4--
That's basically how you restore your inbox off of a back up. It can also be done for the Sent and Deleted folders.
Those .bak files are not created all the time but only under certain conditions. Indeed you were lucky.
Make your own backups.
Jim
WIN7 Ultimate SP1 64bit, IE 11, NTFS,
cable, MS Security Essentials, Windows 7 firewall
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April 8th, 2011, 11:06 AM
#9
Doesn't Outlook Express throw the old mail boxes into the Recycle Bin when you compact? If so (and I think it does), you could just restore from there right?
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April 8th, 2011, 01:02 PM
#10
HAN--As mentioned Compacting puts emails into the Recycle Bin only under certain circumstances--all undesireable. For example. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918069/en-u,
The rest of the time compacting acts mainly (and correctly) on the Deleted Items.dbx file. When you delete an email it disappears from Deleted Items.dbx but it really is still there until you compact.
Jim
WIN7 Ultimate SP1 64bit, IE 11, NTFS,
cable, MS Security Essentials, Windows 7 firewall
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