This morning my computer hiccuped while compressing old messages in Outlook Express. When I finally got things up and running again I noticed that all my e-mail messages for 2006 and Jan 2007 were gone. I found them in the Recycle bin as recovered files with a .bak extension. I clicked restore to remove them from the recycle bin, and can now locate them in a folder on my drive, again all with .bak extensions. Can anyone tell me how I can place these back in the correct folders in Outlook Express, or point me in the right direction? I tried the Import feature, but it would not display .bak files. Any advice much appreciated, thanks...

You have to do this in a particular sequence.

All e-mail items may be missing when you start Outlook Express 6 Service

Pack 1:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918069

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first locate the

Message Store in Windows Explorer.

In OE: Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location

of your Outlook Express files. Press the Tab key to highlight the folder

location, then Ctrl+C. Close OE, then Start | Run | Ctrl+V will put the

location in the box - Click OK and you'll see the OE files. Otherwise, write

the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer.

In WinXP, the dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these files

in Windows Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under

Start | Control Panel | Folder Options Icon | View, or in Windows Explorer |

Tools | Folder Options | View.

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.

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.

To avoid such corruption in future:

- 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 [not available in 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 shut down your machine while Windows is automatically compacting your message store.

Rice_King is spot on.

I had a similar problem two years ago and did exactly what Rice_King suggested, though in a roundabout way because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Anyway, I got all my folders and mails back.

Lessons learnt:

Never keep more than a day's worth of mail in the inbox or sent folder because those two folders appear to be the most likely ones to get corrupted if something goes wrong.

And back-up!

I use DSynchronize to back up the raw data from the OE storage folder and also auto back-up daily using the free version of PicoBackup

opalhort

Lessons learnt:

opalhort

Same here, Wish somebody would have told me 2 years ago, before disaster struck.

Rice King, thank you for the detailed response. I have the SP2 pack installed and I think the shut down occured during the compacting process. I will give that a try in a day or two and report back.