Outlook Express

[Gyn_Paul]

Does anyone know where Outlook Express folders go when they are deleted? They certainly don't end up in the recycle bin. In a mad fit of housekeeping, I made a folder called 'keep for Reference' and dragged into it all the vital email with things like confirmations of passwords and dispatch dates and refs.

I don't have to go any further do I? 

There's no sign of it anywhere. My wife had an hour or two of hell with it crashing every 5 minutes the other day, and.... well... all I know is I didn't delete it!  

p

 

[Christine Animal]

Gyn Paul, all my emails in and out suddenly disappeared yesterday and I was left with an empty Outlook Express, for the second time.

All I can say is I regret aol which I had before, since I'm with Wanadoo. 

[Jo Taylor]

Gyn Paul, look at the "Deleted Items" folder in OE - does it have a cross beside it? Deleted folders end up as a sub-folder there. Try expanding it. If it's there, click, hold and drag to "local folders".

Another thing that can happen is that an accidental slip of the mouse can send one folder into another - again, look for any that have a cross beside indicating a sub-folder, and do the above.

Next, close OE and have a look at your storage location - you'll find it under something like C > Windows > Application Data > Identities - drill down until you find a folder called Outlook Express. It will contain items with the file extension .dbx (do a search for *.dbx if you can't locate the folder), see if you can see one which corresponds to the lost folder. If it's there, open OE and create a new folder with exactly the same name. Close OE. Open it again and see if the new folder contains anything. If not, but you did find the dbx file, try opening it with notepad or wordpad, you should be able to find the information you need but it might be hidden amongst yards of HTML if most of the emails weren't plain text.

Hope one of those works!

Jo

[Will]

Christine, I had exactly the same problem when I installed wanadoo's customised Outlook Express. I found, after a lot of searching, that wanadoo had created a new identity for me, so all the e-mails, address book etc associated with my old identity didn't appear, although they were still there.

I don't know if you have French or English language OE, but look under 'Fichiers' (files) for 'identités' then choose 'gérer les identités...' (sorry, don't know exactly what these are called in the English version). You may find your old 'identity' there which you can select as the default, and everything should miraculously return to as it was.

This was 2-3 years ago now, but I wouldn't imagine wanadoo has become any less intrusive now. Mind you if you had AOL before anything could happen

[Christine Animal]

Thank you Will, I shall try to have a look.  I have the French version of everything!

I had AOL when were up in Normandy and on another computer.  So now down here, in Poitou-Charentes, I thought I would try Wanadoo, but I am not very happy with them.

[Gyn_Paul]

Thanks all,

A 2nd search revealed a version with the last file added in April,  (possibly when the last auto-compact took place ?) so most of it now restored (and copied!).

Perhaps setting 'Deleted Items' to auto empty on closing is not such a great idea after all.

p