DBT's probably are from another period. You can get them back into OE, but if you don't need them, I wouldn't waste the time. If you delete a folder from the folder tree, it will usually remain in the store. You shouldn't have to go in there often, but for my own reasons, I do, so I just put a shortcut on the Desktop. Follow the path in Documents and Settings and when you get to the Outlook Express folder, right click on it | Send To | Desktop (create shortcut).
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Linnane" letsnotdothis@cc wrote in message ...
Okay, will do that first thing tomorrow. Thank you very much. Is this something I should be doing on a regular basis? If I don't look in here for another four years will it be the same sort of museum of old project emails? Or is there a maintenance setting that clears the gunk automatically? I think maybe the DBT files are folders that crashed at some point and disappeared. I just renamed them to DBX and nothing terrible seems to have happened. What ARE they anyway?

You guys never cease to amaze me....

Linnane



"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message ...
Uncheck everything in Tools | Options | Maintenance and close OE. Go to the message store and delete any files that are not associated with folders you are using now. *DO NOT* delete Folders.dbx. The Pop3uidl.dbx is a logfile. A new, empty one will be created when you open OE.

It would be smart to backup your messages first.

Backup & Resto
http://www.insideoe.com/backup/

When you're done, compact your folders.

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are open. Then: FileWork Offline (or double click Working Online in the Status Bar).
FileFolderCompact all folders. Don't touch anything until the compacting is completed.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Linnane" letsnotdothis@cc wrote in message ...
Good grief! There are dozens and dozens of DBX folders there for email folders I haven't seen since 2002. And there are things called DBT folders as well which are enormous, and text folders that are "logs" of various newsgroups as well as one text document called a pop3 log that is 3.2 million KBs Can I delete all this stuff if it's not an email folder I'm currently using? What a shocker.

Thank you
Linnane


"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message ...
The size is located in the Message Store with the corresponding dbx files for each folder.

ToolsOptionsMaintenanceStore folder will reveal the location
of your Outlook Express files. Press the Tab key to highlight the folder location, then Ctrl+C. Close OE, then StartRunCtrl+V will put the location in the box - Click OK and you'll see the OE files. Otherwise, write the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer.

In WindowsXP, 2K & 3K, the OE user files (DBX and WAB) are by default
marked as hidden. To view these files in Explorer, you must enable
Show Hidden Files and Folders under StartControl PanelFolder
OptionsView.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Linnane" letsnotdothis@cc wrote in message ...
Bruce, Can you please tell me how to tell the size of my message folders? If I am in "Local Folders" all I can see is the number of emails unread and the total number of emails but not the size taken by all the messages in the folder.

Thanks
Linnane

"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message ...
. Keep user created
folders under 100MB,

Nope. Think DBX + Temporary (i.e., while [Automatic] compacting is going
on).

Bruce Hagen wrote:
DBT's probably are from another period.

Poor choice of words on my part. I simply meant they were files for folders
that were lost long ago. Since the OP said there were DBXs not seen since
2002, I figured these were probably older than that.

B.

Well, then there' /that/, too. VBEG

Bruce Hagen wrote:
Poor choice of words on my part. I simply meant they were files for
folders that were lost long ago. Since the OP said there were DBXs not
seen since 2002, I figured these were probably older than that.

B.

"PA Bear" wrote in message
...
Nope. Think DBX + Temporary (i.e., while [Automatic] compacting is
going on).

Bruce Hagen wrote:
DBT's probably are from another period.

Hi,

the best way to bring back lost files is imho use data recovery tools
such as Active@ Undelete or Uneraser(for pure DOS). These are tuly
mighty utils that yet never failed me and worked simply perfectly. You
should definately try it out.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/

We tend to recommend programs he
http://www.oehelp.com/

Less expensive and written by a MS-MVP that understands OE.

And DBXpress is the *only* tool that can retrieve messages after compacting
was performed.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

the best way to bring back lost files is imho use data recovery tools
such as Active@ Undelete or Uneraser(for pure DOS). These are tuly
mighty utils that yet never failed me and worked simply perfectly. You
should definately try it out.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/

"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
We tend to recommend programs he
http://www.oehelp.com/

Less expensive and written by a MS-MVP that understands OE.

And DBXpress is the *only* tool that can retrieve messages after
compacting was performed.


Just to clarify, DBXpress is the only program that will ignore the file
system and read the hard disk clusters directly. Very often the file is
still there (so recovery of the file is not what is needed), but the
messages in the file are gone, but still on the disk clusters.

So by going directly to the disk clusters, one can often recover the
messages that are no longer associated with files. If you take a file and
shrink it by 50% (due to the compaction), then trying to recover the file is
not going to get back what was shrunk from it.

I don't remember the original issue here, as its not quoted, but if the
issue is loss of a single file, then yes, maybe a file recovery program to
unerase may work, but if it involves loss of messages from a file, and the
file still exists, then a file recovery or message recovery program that
works only on the file will be of no use.

cheers,

steve



--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

the best way to bring back lost files is imho use data recovery tools
such as Active@ Undelete or Uneraser(for pure DOS). These are tuly
mighty utils that yet never failed me and worked simply perfectly. You
should definately try it out.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/