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~

"G. Silber" wrote in message
. ..
Sorry if this has been discussed, I've searched for answers without
success. The problem - Outlook Express does a cleanup/compact routine
every so often which does whatever it does whenever it does and I haven't
paid much attention to it because I assume it truncates old messages. But
today after a cleanup, all my messages from June 25 until today are GONE.
Unbelievable!!! If this process isn't so darn annoying in itself, it now
deletes new messages??? Anyway, I know where the .dbx folder is for my
identity, but don't know if this is any help. My question is - how do I
retrieve these messages? Also, is there a way to stop this extremely
annoying task of automatic cleanup? Thanks in advance.