[johnmcc45]

I lost my OE Inbox. It had a lot of emails in it. I followed the great instructions posted by Throoper on a now closed thread. I have highlighted the area where I have difficulty with asterisks and my new input starts after that. Here is Throopers advice which worked until I got to the asterisks:
throoper

Trusted Advisor with 3,840 posts.
Join Date: Jan 2007
Experience: Intermediate

03-Aug-2011, 10:01 AM #8
First thing to do is open the OE Message Store folder.

You need to have Hidden files and Folders showing.
At the top of any folder(My Documents for example) click Tools>Folder Options>View tab.
Scroll down the list and place a check next to "Show Hidden Files and Folders" then click Apply and OK.

In OE
Click on Tools>Options>Maintenance tab>Store Folder.
On the Store Location box, highlight the address by pressing the Tab key on your keyboard.
Press Control+C (both at the same time) to copy the address to the clipboard.
Click Cancel on all boxes and close OE.

Click on Start>Run.
Press Control+V (both at the same time) to paste the address into the command line and click OK.
The Store Folder containing all the DBX files should open.

Make a quick backup of the DBX files.
Click Edit>Select All.
Click Edit>Copy
Go to the Desktop and right click an empty area.
Select New>Folder from the menu. Name it Mailbackup.
Open Mailbackup and click Edit>Paste.
There should now be a copy of everything that was in the Message Store in the folder Mailbackup. This will not only be an emergency backup, but a source for Import which you'll do shortly.
Close Mailbackup.

In the Message Store folder, DELETE the files Inbox.dbx and pop3uidl.dbx

Open OE.
Any messages that may still be on the server should download to the Inbox when you click Send/Receive.
If they download and display properly, we've found the problem and hopefully have it corrected and you can continue with the instructions. Otherwise stop here and post back.
***********************************************************************
Create a new folder in OE (File>New>Folder) and move everything from the Inbox into it.
You can then run the OE Import utility to bring in the mail from the old Inbox in the Mailbackup folder you created.

File>Import>Messages.
Select OE6>Next.
Check Import from an OE6 Store directory>Next.
Click the Browse and select the Mailbackup folder on the desktop>OK>Next.
Select Inbox>Next.
Let it run and hopefully everything will Import successfully.
***********************************************************************
Everything went fine until I tried to import my old inbox. I did the following.
1. Opened OE, it created a new Inbox and loaded up about 30 emails.
2. created new folder and moved the new emails to that.
3. Used File<Import>messages, went to where the mailbackup folder is. and imported the old Inbox.dbx.
4. Instantly, had a pop screen saying that all is done, but nothing in the Inbox. It processed the action way too fast so it did not happen. I tried a few times.
5. For test purposes, I renamed one of the other folders in OE and then imported the original folder from the mailbackup folder and that worked fine. So the size of the Inbox seems to be the issue.
6. I assume that there was no need to delete the inbox folder, which I don't think is possible anyway unless I went into the store folder, deleted the Inbox (empty) and then imported the old Inbox back into the store folder before opening up OE.

So I have a few questions re what I might do and if you have an answer that would be great.

1. Could I try to setup a new OE account (actually a copy of the account I already have) on a separate computer and then import the folder into that? Or is it even possible for OE to import a folder from another networked computer. The other computer has lots of free drive space. If I could do that I could sort out the files into a bunch of small and separate folders and then reimport them into my main computer?.
2. See item directly above.

Thank you.
System Win XP SP3.

[throoper]

Hi and welcome to TSG.

It sounds like your Inbox has corrupted and if you can't Import the messages from it back to OE about the only recourse is to run an extractor on it to try recovering the data.

Download a copy of DBXtract from HERE.

Create a New folder on the desktop and place a copy of the DBX file in it.

Download and unzip DBXtract to the desktop.
Double click the DBXtract.exe file to run it.

In the Action section, set it to save "By Subject". The "Remove Re:" will remove the Re: from the message title of replies so it's up to you if you leave that checked or not.
DO NOT check Recover mode.

In the Input section, click the Browse button.
Browse to the folder containing the DBX file and click OK.
The "Path" line should now point to the folder with the DBX file and the "File" line should have the name of the DBX file.

In the Output section, click the Browse button. Browse to the same folder as the Input.
The Input Path and the Output Path should be the same.
Click the Extract button.
If there are any messages that can be recovered, they will show up in the same folder with the DBX and be in the form of individual EML messages.
The EML's can be drag and dropped into any folder in OE.

[johnmcc45]

Thanks Throoper.

I will follow your advice as it seem there is not much choice and I thank you. I suspect the problem comes from having way too large an Inbox. I have been sloppy in managing it recently.
My system has one hd with two partitions. Drive C where my OE resides is 35 GB with 7.5 gb free. Drive D is 35gb with 21.9GB free. My INBOX.DBX is almost 2gb. That's the one I backed up. The current INbox.Dbx is only 35,147kb. The OE store folder, which of course now is with the reduced capacity Inbox.dbx is 8.7gb. I have a lot of files with attachments.

So the questions are before I do the dbextract process.

If I place a copy of my corrupted 2g Inbox.dbx on my desktop and then do the extract how much space is the extracted file likely to take. Let's just assume that 99% of the emails are not corrupted. Would it be another 2gb or much more?

Given that I have more capacity on my drive d, if I change the location of the store folder to drive D, before I do the extract will that affect the extract? I don't believe it will.

I have changed store folders to another drive with another OE account and had no difficulty. If I go ahead and change the current store folder (8.7Gb) to a folder on drive d, is that likely to go smoothly? I am wondering if the size of the store folder has any affect on the "moving."?

Last question. I have an Inbox.bak made in Jan 21, 2012. It would conatin many of the files in my current corrupted inbox. If for some reason dbextract does not solve my problem. Do I just change the ".bak" extension ot ".dbx" on that file and import it into OE using file>import>messages.... to reactivate it?

Many thanks.

[throoper]

Originally Posted by johnmcc45

So the questions are before I do the dbextract process.

If I place a copy of my corrupted 2g Inbox.dbx on my desktop and then do the extract how much space is the extracted file likely to take. Let's just assume that 99% of the emails are not corrupted. Would it be another 2gb or much more?

Given that I have more capacity on my drive d, if I change the location of the store folder to drive D, before I do the extract will that affect the extract? I don't believe it will.

It should take up the same amount of space if your optimism pays off.
I don't recall ever doing it on a different drive, but I don't see why it won't work. The program doesn't care where it sends the EML's.

I have changed store folders to another drive with another OE account and had no difficulty. If I go ahead and change the current store folder (8.7Gb) to a folder on drive d, is that likely to go smoothly? I am wondering if the size of the store folder has any affect on the "moving."?

The size of the overall Store folder doesn't matter. It can be as big as your hard drive. It's the size of the individual DBX files that counts. The larger the DBX, the more data it contains and the more likely a problem can occur when the data is disturbed.
If you have a few very large files, split them up into other folders and compact before you move them to another location.

Last question. I have an Inbox.bak made in Jan 21, 2012. It would conatin many of the files in my current corrupted inbox. If for some reason dbextract does not solve my problem. Do I just change the ".bak" extension ot ".dbx" on that file and import it into OE using file>import>messages.... to reactivate it?

[throoper]

Originally Posted by johnmcc45

Last question. I have an Inbox.bak made in Jan 21, 2012. It would conatin many of the files in my current corrupted inbox. If for some reason dbextract does not solve my problem. Do I just change the ".bak" extension ot ".dbx" on that file and import it into OE using file>import>messages.... to reactivate it?

OOPS!!! My cat just submitted before I was done.

You just mentioned the minor detail that may save you some work.
With OE closed.
Put a copy of the Inbox.bak into the Message Store.
Rename the current Inbox.dbx to Inbox.old.
Rename the Inbox.bak to Inbox.dbx and open OE.
Assuming the BAK isn't corrupted, the messages should now be in the Inbox.

Note: Be sure to have File extensions showing in Folder Options before you do any renaming.

[ansh674532]

I lost my OE Inbox. It had a lot of emails in it. I followed the great instructions posted by Throoper on a now closed thread. I have highlighted the area where I have difficulty with asterisks and my new input starts after that. Here is Throopers advice which worked until I got to the asterisks:

Hey...
I have just read your issue and want to suggest you to use Outlook express repair tool for the recovery of lost outlook express inbox. I am sure that you will be happy after getting back your lost OE Inbox. As i had faced this problem 2 days before and really its a good recovery software. You can also download this tool and can evaluate your recovery results.

[johnmcc45]

Hi Throoper. I have not got back to you as I am going to try your solution this week. Thanks again and I'll let you know what happened.