Are you compacting in this manner?

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.

Compact Your OE Folders:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

Did you determine which folders compacting hung on? What are the sizes of
your dbx files right now? (Just those over 300MB).
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my nightly
backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried to do a
manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where one
problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were
not in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple of
those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long time on
one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the whole
machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I could
not get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a
power-off crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our
problem .... I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I
had any other choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about
keeping the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait until
January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to move
the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something and we
can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that
important to you.

DBXpress:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about
15 minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located
when they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that
date to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't
find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom