Windows xp home edition version 5.1??? Never heard of it.
However............

The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), and bloated
folders. More on that below.

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovery tool:

DBXpress run in Disk Mode is the best chance to recover messages:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

A general warning if you don't want to lose your messages in the futu

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become
corrupted. Create your own user defined folders for storing mail and move
your mail to them. Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created
folders under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

And backup often.

Backup and Resto

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/backup/

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"janice" wrote in message
...
The 05 and 06 were in the same folder my inbox. yes oe did compact before
the
loss. I notice it come up and I let it do it's thing. I realize now I
probably had way too much in there, if I knew this was going to happen I
would have been deleting some of it that I no longer needed. Now I am in
the
predicament of loosing the most current stuff. I hope this can be fixed...
thanks for getting back to me so soon.

"Bruce Hagen" wrote:

Windows version? Were the 05 and 06 messages in separate folders, or the
same folder? Was OE compacting prior to the loss?
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"janice" wrote in message
...
I am very new at this I had a lot of e-mail in outlook express and now
for
some reason just the 2006 emails disappeared and I have the 2005 ones
if
it
was the other way around I could live with it, but I had some stuff in
the
2006 that is very important, how do I get it back.. I never deleted
anything,
this is driving me crazy please give me a simplistic explanation how to
fix
this please.....