I worked on a person's computer recently and he made the observation
that three months worth of his e-mails were missing (and NOT deleted
by this person - the emails = $$$ to him). Anyone have any
explanation on how this could happen?

Obviously my recommendation needs to be to ditch OE to this person (I
noticed it doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well), but
what can I tell them to explain this happening?

A Programmer wrote:
I worked on a person's computer recently and he made the observation
that three months worth of his e-mails were missing (and NOT deleted
by this person - the emails = $$$ to him). Anyone have any
explanation on how this could happen?

Obviously my recommendation needs to be to ditch OE to this person (I
noticed it doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well), but
what can I tell them to explain this happening?

Probably, OE was compacting and your friend rebooted in the middle or
had a power failure. Back up is a computer user's best friend. When you
say "doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well" do you mean
sending more than 300 messages or storing more than 300 messages?

Your friend has probably lost all the messages for good, although he or
she could try this:

http://www.oehelp.com/dbxtract/default.aspx

Not free.

Alias

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:59:45 +0200, -Alias- wrote:

Probably, OE was compacting and your friend rebooted in the middle or
had a power failure.

Logical explanation.

Back up is a computer user's best friend.

Which is not easy at all with OE, I've found as well.

When you say "doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well" do you mean
sending more than 300 messages or storing more than 300 messages?

Storing more than 300 messages. Or maybe had to do with size. The
program in the state I found it to look at was literally unusable and
crashed at the drop of a dime. Then again, he had much more in excess
of 300 messages in it at the time.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if this guy would hold the record for
biggest OE mailbox (in terms of file size). For what I was contracted
to do at the time (archive old messages and pull them out of the
program), it took me roughly 4 hrs to complete it.

A Programmer wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:59:45 +0200, -Alias- wrote:

Probably, OE was compacting and your friend rebooted in the middle or
had a power failure.

Logical explanation.

Back up is a computer user's best friend.

Which is not easy at all with OE, I've found as well.

I back it up with one three clicks. See:

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

Free.

When you say "doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well" do you mean
sending more than 300 messages or storing more than 300 messages?

Storing more than 300 messages. Or maybe had to do with size. The
program in the state I found it to look at was literally unusable and
crashed at the drop of a dime. Then again, he had much more in excess
of 300 messages in it at the time.

You can have as many messages as you want as long as each .dbx file
doesn't exceed 100 MB.

Do not archive messages in the default folders such as Inbox, Sent Items
or Deleted Items. Create new folders under Local Folders for archiving.

Alias

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:31:03 +0200, -Alias- wrote:

You can have as many messages as you want as long as each .dbx file
doesn't exceed 100 MB.

That would be his problem, no doubt. I suggested several times while
I was doing this that he needed to jettison OE for what he was doing
(his full mailbox is 4.5GB, and inbox and sent messages was 2.5GB of
it). Given the time that has passed, I wouldn't doubt if he's added
another .5GB on each of them.

Do not archive messages in the default folders such as Inbox, Sent Items
or Deleted Items. Create new folders under Local Folders for archiving.

That's what I did. Then I copied those DBX's out of the mailbox
folder.

"A Programmer" wrote in message
...
I worked on a person's computer recently and he made the observation
that three months worth of his e-mails were missing (and NOT deleted
by this person - the emails = $$$ to him). Anyone have any
explanation on how this could happen?

Obviously my recommendation needs to be to ditch OE to this person (I
noticed it doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well), but
what can I tell them to explain this happening?

Alias gave you the probable cause.
DBXpress can find all messages on the hard drive that have not actually been
overwritten if it's an NTFS drive.
DBXpress: ($25) http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM
Reply in newsgroup
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve
neither liberty or security"

See also points 2 and 3 here for the futu www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2
There is a patch that addresses the compaction bug, which is probably what
he encountered.

steve

"A Programmer" wrote in message
...
I worked on a person's computer recently and he made the observation
that three months worth of his e-mails were missing (and NOT deleted
by this person - the emails = $$$ to him). Anyone have any
explanation on how this could happen?

Obviously my recommendation needs to be to ditch OE to this person (I
noticed it doesn't handle anything past about 300 messages well), but
what can I tell them to explain this happening?