Outlook Express Recover Emails

Hi All,

I know I am talking about a long outdated software, but my father has been using this repulsive program for work and last week I guess he had some very important emails deleted. It is very strange how they were deleted: he sorts his emails into folders regularly and one day when he was clicking a folder to open the emails inside it, Outlook Express automatically deleted everything in there, or perhaps hid everything that was in that folder. So I went to the directory on his computer that stores all the Outlook Express dbx files, and the folder that he clicked on still said it was 2.5MB large. Now this didn't happen to every folder that he clicked on, but maybe about 8 folders were deleted in this fashion. He can still click on other folders he has within Outlook Express and nothing gets deleted. So I am assuming the emails deleted by Outlook Express were really just corrupted, and OE cannot read them? I seem not to be able to recover them. The software I have tried was: UnDbx,Kernel for Outlook Express, OEMail Recovery, and Repair Tool for Outlook Express to no avail.

I am starting to run out of options and hoping to turn to you all, I cannot understand why the .dbx file would be as large as it is and not have anything be able to recover/read them.

Any thoughts or guidance?

Thanks

 

I also still use this "repulsive" program even though it is outdated! You might try reading this and see if it helps. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...F2gEIL84wtsSuB2hkqmJuiw&bvm=bv.42080656,d.eWU

 

I have Windows Live Mail set to leave all emails on the email provider. You may look there. I know you would have had to set the program to do this before the emails were deleted and by default it's set to delete emails it pulls from the server, but if someone had the forethought to set it there may still be a few emails there.

 

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions.

Unfortunately he did not allow emails to be stored on the server, believe me, that is what we are doing now.

And the .bak gave me a lot of hope but I couldn't find any .bak files related to his email boxes on the computer through a comprehensive system search. Still don't know why that .dbx file is so large though nothing is stored in it?

Any other suggestions or should I throw in the towel?

 

Is there a chance that he has this installed on an older computer with the files still backed up there?

Unless someone else has any other ideas you may be out of options.

Also, if you do have the program leave things on the server, yet the server has spam guard turned on and you find emails you want to keep are finding it's way into the spam folder you may want to turn the spam guard off on the server. Otherwise it will delete the suspected spam files and you'll be right back here wondering what's going on.

 

Since you found a 2.5 meg folder in dbx files, then I'd guess that it has something in it. You could try right clicking and opening it with notepad just to see if anything comes up. Just be sure to untick the box that says use this application to do it all the time. I just tried it on one of my folders, and it will display the messages, but all the other ( email headers ) is screwy!