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 does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

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

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

Recovery tools:

If you are using a fully patched version of XP/SP2, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918069/en-us

If not:

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~

wrote in message
link.net...
I have read for 2 hours on this ng to see if this question has already been
answered, and saw bits and pieces of info, but not enough to apply to my
situation.
All of a sudden today, almost all my email folders were totally empty. It
has been suggested to me that the OE was corrupted during a compacting
that went awry somehow.
I did a search on .dbx files and I can see all the files, with their
folder locations, but I cannot print out that listing or figure out how to
get the "stuff" in there into the appropriate OE folders. "Import" does
not seem to allow files to come in, but only items from other email
set-ups...
I am fairly low tech but very frustrated.
I found a file called ARCHIVE and somehow (don't ask me how) was able to
get that in to OE, but it is not the emails that disappeared today; it is
a folder that was created for me when I bought a new computer 2 years ago.
HELP!