Need Help Recovering E-mail Adresses From Hard Drive

An acquaintance of me recently had to replace his PC. However, he recently discovered that most of his E-mail addresses are missing. I volunteered to recover these from his old hard drive, but, unfortunately, to no avail.
I did managed to access his HD via my own PC, and located the paths specified in the Microsoft webpage linked below, but none of them include any files whatsoever.
https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...ta-files-0996ece3-57c6-49bc-977b-0d1892e2aacc

Since I can't find any files related to Microsoft Outlook, my guess is that the acquaintance in question used another mail client, instead of Outlook, but I can't be certain, as he is not very knowledgeable about computers, so to speak, and really does not know which program he used to handle his e-mail traffic.


Are there any other files that could include E-mail addresses?
If yes, what extension should I search for?

Thanks in advance for any help given.

 

He may not have been using an email client at all, just webmail. If he can remember his own email address and password you may be able to help him access his account online.

 

Thanks for the reply.

If I remember correctly, he did use a client. Before he replaced his PC, I didn't saw him use any browser when handling his E-mail. His E-mail address is also one he received from his ISP, instead of using any of the web-based services (such as Gmail, Outlook.com etc)

 

OK, that narrows it down a bit. I guess you have thoroughly searched the drive for Outlook's .pst files? I find the Everything search engine awesome for this sort of thing - if it exists Everything will instantly find it. If there are no .pst files, and as your friend is not very knowledgeable, it's likely he was using a client that was supplied with his computer - Outlook Express for XP, Windows Mail for Vista, Windows Live Mail for 7, or Mail for 8 and 10 but I think the last can be discounted. So if you know what Windows version he was using you may bbe able to pin down the client, and from that identify the client data file. HTH

 

The other thing that occurs to me, though it might not be case in this instance, people who use an email address provided by an ISP can almost always also access that mail account online via a web browser. A contact list of email addresses may be there.

 

Judging from what I saw when his old PC was still working, he either used Vista or 7 (more likely). I tried searching for .edb files (where WM or WLM keep their data) and found several files with the name "Contacts.edb", one of which I guess is the file he requires.

Now I only need to determine if the addresses included in said files belong to him or not, seeing as others in his household also used the PC. But that is just a matter of converting these .edb files into a readable list and showing it to him.

 

You will probably first have to install the relevant client to be able to do that.

 

I did manage to convert the .edb using the following software: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/live_messenger_contacts.html

 

This program may work, and doesn't need the original system:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/ese_database_view.html
It was linked here:
http://superuser.com/questions/265954/how-to-restore-windows-live-mail-contacts