ok, I will print this out.
your theory as to why this happens, while logical, is NOT correct. none of
those events have happened.
as I said w/ my original post of 7-10 days ago, I read this ng for hours
before I posted anything, and I learned about compacting only when offline,
etc. and that is what I have been doing and have taught to all my buddies,
who know think (wrongly) that I know about computers.
"Jim Pickering" wrote in message
...
If you open the Recyle Bin, you will find the files now have an extension
of BAK. If you select all the BAK files in the Recycle Bin (use the Ctrl
while selecting) then click Restore, they will be copied to the default
message store folder but as BAK files.

If you then use Windows Explorer to navigate to the message store folder
(and only do this with Outlook Express closed) you will now find a mix of
BAK and DBX files. What you would now need to do (and this is easy from a
command window if you are familiar with old style DOS commands, but if not
you can use Explorer) is first, select all of the DBX files that are there
(again holding the Ctrl key while selecting) and if you're brave, delete
them. If you're not that brave, then Move them to a new folder you
create. That will leave only BAK files in the message store folder (along
with any .log files) and you can now rename the BAK files with a DBX
extension. Be careful to only change the extension and do not tamper with
any part of the original name, only the extension.

When you complete this, you can again open Outlook Express and your
messages that were in the BAK files will appear.

Now, why does this happen. I suspect that it's because you are either
terminating Outlook Express by using Task Manager or you are shutting down
the computer after getting a notice that a compacting operation is about
to begin. Good luck and make sure you do things exactly as outlined or
you will not have any luck with the recovery.
--
Jim Pickering, MVP, Outlook Express
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/pr...8-1171988A62D6
Please deliver feedback to the newsgroup, so that others can be helped.


wrote in message
nk.net...
I had not yet finished dealing with Steve Cochran, who has been trying to
help me with DBxpress...and now the current messages have disappeared!
However, this time they are in the recycle bin...I had carefully saved
all the pertinent notes on this ng to handle this...but they were in the
emails that disappeared.
So, I would be grateful for the info on how to suck those back from the
recycle bin into email.
And ... what could be wrong that this keeps happening?