[Jukie]

Well, I thought I'd try the old standby of shutting down the computer. At that time it said it was going to install the service pack 2, or something. Apparently this solved the problem. I'm not sure why this didn't work the other times I shut down or didn't install earlier, but it did solve the problem. So thank you for all your help, it is much appreciated.

[EAFiedler]

Can you access the .wab file you moved to the Desktop now?

[Jukie]

Yes, I can access them, but my address book is complete in OE. So should I just delete them or is my address being pulled from those. Should I put them back where I got them from?

[EAFiedler]

The directory location of the Address Book in Outlook Express, can be found in it's Help > About Outlook Express.

A .csv file of your Address Book would be a good idea as a backup.

File > Export > Other Address Book
Select Text File (comma separated values)

You can then delete or keep the .wab file you saved to your Desktop, since you can create as many Address Books (.wab files) as you want.

Outlook Express will use the Address Book it created in the directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\(UserAccount)\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book


Glad to hear it is sorted out now.

[Kinnison]

Originally Posted by EAFiedler

That sounds promising.

With Outlook Express closed:
Try the wab /new command again, and create a new .wab file using the same name as the old .wab file.
For example: owner.wab
In the File Name box, Key in: owner.wab and click the open button and the new owner.wab file should open.
It will be empty.
Close the .wab.


Move the new .wab file into the directory where the previous .wab file was located.
C:\Documents and Settings\(UserAccount)\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book


Start Outlook Express and try to access the Address Book to see if you still get the same error.

Hello! I have been facing the exact same problem with a computer in my work, and up to the quoted post, I have tried all suggestions and gotten the exact same results as the other person with the problem. However, this is where our roads part: I still get the same error even after moving in a new empty address book. Outlook express starts up ok without poping up the message it used to upon start up (it was something about "please reinstall"), but still brings up an error message when I try to open an email in its own window, when I try to forward one, or make a new email.
"There was an error opening this message. An error has occurred."

When trying to open the contacts by clicking on the Book icon inside OE I get this message:
"Unable to open the Address Book. The Address Book may not be installed properly."

It still can receive emails normally. Also, it appears it can delete emails without problems too.

Please help!!!! (Just to clarify: The computer specs I have posted in my profile are not the ones of the work computer who has this issue.)

[Kinnison]

Update.

I noticed this PC did not have WinXp ServicePack 3 installed. So I found it on update.microsoft.com and had it installed.

Afterwards, I checked OE and to my surprise it appeared to be working. I could open emails in their own window without any error messages and I opened the address book (from within OE) normally too. However, it was empty. Thats because I had the wab files in a seperate folder on the desktop as was advised in a previous post. So in an attempt to restore all the contacts and multiple identities etc. I copied them back to where they were, overwriting the new ones that were there. Then I tried OE again to find the problem again, exactly as it was before

I screwed up didnt I? Darn I was so close.... we really need to get those contacts and indentities back in there because it is vital work data...

[EAFiedler]

Hi Kinnison

Were you able to get this resolved?

Let us know.

[Kinnison]

Yes I manage to resolve this as follows.
At work we have a total of 3 PCs on a LAN, my employer informed me it was ok to use the contacts that we had on the Outlook Express of another of our PCs.

So what I did was copy over the adress book file (user.wab) from the other pc to the problematic one (backing up everything first), and the contacts where luckily restored.

Now the weird thing is, afterwards a new problem appeared, as all of our emails *dissapeared* !!!!!!

I read online that, this can happen if there are folders in OE that are too full of stuff (above a certain number of MegaBytes). Especially the problem is frequent with the inbox folder. OE manages to corrupt the email files easily and that can make it unable to recognise the emails.

However looking at the actual files (these are .dbx) that contain the emails on the folders where they are located shows that there are indeed containing information (big files more than 400MB, that shows they must have the emails still in them).

So to resolve this new added problem I used a freeware utility called DBXtract. That allowed me to get back the emails out of the .dbx files of OE and save them elsewhere with a different filetype.

Once that was out of the way, I purposefully deleted the identities of OE and created new ones. That gave me "clean" .dbx files, albeit empty ones. But I imported the previously extracted emails back into these new identities and in this way I was finaly able to restore things to what they were before.


Notice: Actually not EXACTLY like they were before: some emails had been damaged with their subjects appearing as blank where before there was text, some had even lost their "From" information so it wasnt obvious who sent them. That is because of the Outlook Express corrupting the original .dbx files. I read that although it is not very documented, in fact OE will casually put in 00 (hex) values in the email files, where previously there was data. Totally infuriating but its true... Anyways we were lucky there was not very much damage done.

Another thing that has changed since our original setup of OE is that now we have multiple folders created, each with some emails, so that there is not one folder that gets excessively big. This helps reduce the chance of OE corrupting them. And always keep the actual inbox folder as empty as possible by moving new emails into other folders.

I guess one may as well save himself the trouble and use some other email client instead of Microsofts (because Outlook -not express- that comes with office has its own share of problems as well). I spent a full week to sort everything out, no one should have to go through this. There are other good free applications for emails with less problems, like thunderbird, eudora and others.

[EAFiedler]

Thanks for letting us know your solution.

I was curious if the Contacts were being shared by Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook, but the existence of Microsoft Outlook on the machine had not been mentioned.

[Kinnison]

The machines we use all have office installed (with all its features) but as far as I know we have never run Outlook. Actually, while I was searching for a solution I came across the suggestion to check for shared adress books between Outlook Express and Outlook, multiple times. So I did check as thoroughly as I could and confirmed the adress book was not being shared.

[MomAries]

Hi Jukie,very good ideas expressed here. Your address book file is probably corrupted.

Do you have any other accounts, like Yahoo or Hotmail you can Import your contacts from?? To import click File → Import → Windows Contacts ... it will ask you which file you want to import from ...

As a last resort try this online tech. support: www.plumchoice.com. They are not free but very effective. We use them once in awhile when we are desperate and no other tools work.
They take over your computer and solve the problem.