Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the Sent
Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't find them
anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009 date
being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP and IE 7.

Tom

Methinks you waited too long to archive.

The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), or 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 running XP/SP2, or SP3, and are fully patched, then you should
have a backup of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, (or possibly the message
store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the location
of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in
Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these
files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under Start
| Control Panel | Folder Options | View.

Close OE and then in Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the
missing, or empty, folder and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted
later once you have successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the Message
Store.

Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the *exact* same
name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak. Eg: If the
file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open the new folder
and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty, continue on to
the next step.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If there
is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, open the Recycle bin and right
click on the bak file for the folder in question and click Restore. Open the
message store back up and change the file extension from .bak to .dbx. Close
the message store and open OE. The messages should now be back in the
folder.

If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and delete the
old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop.

If you do not have bak copies of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, then:

DBXpress run in Extract From 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 to help avoid this 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.

Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer
of protection that eats up CPUs, slows down sending and receiving, and
causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs, account setting changes
and has even been responsible for lose of messages. Your up-to-date A/V
program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

And backup often.

Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB Freeware)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the Sent
Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't find
them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom

Why it happens:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/probl...s.htm#mailgone
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx

Recovering the missing data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx (#2 and #4)
and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918069 (see Notes section under
Resolution)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality than
DBXtract)
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Avoiding Such Corruption in Futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Frequently perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working
offline". More at http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- Do not cancel Automatic Compacting, should it occur, and do not attempt to
close OE via Task Manager or shutdown your machine if Automatic Compacting
is taking place.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages) and provides no additional protection:

Why you don't need your anti-virus to scan your email
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tuto...ning/index.htm

--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Client - since 2002

Tom Brown wrote:
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the Sent
Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't find
them
anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date
being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP and IE
7.

Tom

Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files and
Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone fair and
square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and restoring the
Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about 15 minutes and so
far I am only back to June 22 and have not located when they disappeared
yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages included.
Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that date to today
after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the Sent
Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't find
them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom

IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now and
once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait until
January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to move
the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something and we can
discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that important
to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal recovery
mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone fair
and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and restoring
the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about 15 minutes
and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located when they
disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that date
to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the Sent
Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't find
them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom

OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my nightly
backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried to do a
manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where one
problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were not
in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple of
those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long time on
one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the whole
machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I could not
get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a power-off
crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our problem ....
I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I had any other
choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about keeping
the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait until
January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to move
the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something and we
can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that important
to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about 15
minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located when
they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that date
to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't
find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom

Are you compacting in this manner?

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.

Compact Your OE Folders:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

Did you determine which folders compacting hung on? What are the sizes of
your dbx files right now? (Just those over 300MB).
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my nightly
backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried to do a
manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where one
problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were
not in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple of
those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long time on
one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the whole
machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I could
not get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a
power-off crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our
problem .... I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I
had any other choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about
keeping the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait until
January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to move
the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something and we
can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that
important to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about
15 minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located
when they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that
date to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't
find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom

Bruce,

I can't be certain which folders gave me the error message, but I do recall
that one of them was a default folder (maybe Sent or Deleted Items?) and one
of them was a folder I made (maybe Saved Sent 2006). I did always go to the
top of the tree before starting a manual compaction operation but I don't
think I remembered to go offline.

But, since I wrote to you, we have discovered that we lost the contents of
21 custom folders when it hung and I had to crash it. I have subsequently
restored them but to be honest, I am afraid to compact again. I'll try
again next week as we are getting ready to head out of town and I don't need
the aggravation right now.

Right now, the largest .dbx folder in the directory is 1,041,099 KB and if
my math is correct, that is about 127 MB (thank you Google). Most of the
ones we lost were in the 2000 KB to 55,000 KB range. So, to make a long
answer short, none of our folders is nearly as large as 300 MB.

Thanks,

Tom


"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Are you compacting in this manner?

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything
until the compacting is completed.

Compact Your OE Folders:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

Did you determine which folders compacting hung on? What are the sizes of
your dbx files right now? (Just those over 300MB).
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my
nightly backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried
to do a manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where
one problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were
not in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple
of those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long
time on one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the
whole machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I
could not get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a
power-off crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our
problem .... I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I
had any other choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about
keeping the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait
until January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to
move the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something
and we can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that
important to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about
15 minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located
when they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that
date to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I
can't find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running
XP and IE 7.

Tom

Bruce,

I can't be certain which folders gave me the error message, but I do recall
that one of them was a default folder (maybe Sent or Deleted Items?) and one
of them was a folder I made (maybe Saved Sent 2006). I did always go to the
top of the tree before starting a manual compaction operation but I don't
think I remembered to go offline.

But, since I wrote to you, we have discovered that we lost the contents of
21 custom folders when it hung and I had to crash it. I have subsequently
restored them but to be honest, I am afraid to compact again. I'll try
again next week as we are getting ready to head out of town and I don't need
the aggravation right now.

Right now, the largest .dbx folder in the directory is 1,041,099 KB and if
my math is correct, that is about 127 MB (thank you Google). Most of the
ones we lost were in the 2000 KB to 55,000 KB range. So, to make a long
answer short, none of our folders is nearly as large as 300 MB.

Thanks,

Tom


"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Are you compacting in this manner?

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything
until the compacting is completed.

Compact Your OE Folders:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

Did you determine which folders compacting hung on? What are the sizes of
your dbx files right now? (Just those over 300MB).
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my
nightly backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried
to do a manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where
one problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were
not in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple
of those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long
time on one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the
whole machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I
could not get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a
power-off crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our
problem .... I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I
had any other choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about
keeping the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait
until January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to
move the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something
and we can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that
important to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about
15 minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located
when they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that
date to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I
can't find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running
XP and IE 7.

Tom

Are you compacting in this manner?

Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are
open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the
Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until
the compacting is completed.

Compact Your OE Folders:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

Did you determine which folders compacting hung on? What are the sizes of
your dbx files right now? (Just those over 300MB).
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
OK, thanks for the tips.

Actually, I was able to recover most of the missing emails from my nightly
backup from a few weeks ago. After I got them restored, I tried to do a
manual "compact all folders" and I think I have discovered where one
problem is.

During the compaction, a couple of the folders give "bonk" and an error
message saying "The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or by
another application." That required me to click on the box to clear that
error and proceed with the compaction. What gives with that? They were
not in use at all.

Then, this brings me to the real culprit. After I had cleared a couple of
those error messages, I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long time on
one folder. So, I tried to move the mouse and I found that the whole
machine was frozen. It stayed that way for a couple of hours and I could
not get the Task Manager or anything. So, I was required to do a
power-off crash to get the blasted thing running again. So, there is our
problem .... I had to do a crash during compaction. I didn't see that I
had any other choice.

Any suggestions other than the ones you have already mentioned about
keeping the folders small?

Tom




"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
IMHO, what you should do is create a 2009 Sent Items archive folder now
and once a day, drag all your Sent Items messages to it. Don't wait until
January, 2010.

If you find a dbx file with the missing messages, you may be able to move
the messages in among the others. Post back if you find something and we
can discuss it at that time.

You still have the option of DBXpress if these messages are that
important to you.

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

You may need to run it in the Extract From Disk Mode if its normal
recovery mode fails to find the lost messages.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Thanks Bruce and PA Bear,

I tried all the monkeying around with the Sent Items.dbx and .bak files
and Recycle Bin and those messages in that date range seem to be gone
fair and square. So, now I am going through our nightly backups and
restoring the Sent Items.dbx for each night. Each attempt takes about
15 minutes and so far I am only back to June 22 and have not located
when they disappeared yet.

But, let's assume I do find a Sent Items.dbx that has the messages
included. Is there any way to APPEND/ADD the sent messages from that
date to today after I restore the folder?

Thanks,

Tom


"Tom Brown" wrote in message
...
Another strange one. My wife just discovered that all emails in the
Sent Items between Jan 1, 2009 and May 28, 2009 are missing and I can't
find them anywhere. What could cause this?

We routinely archive all Sent Items from previous years in customized
folders like Saved Sent 2007 or Saved Sent 2008, hence the Jan 1, 2009
date being the first one in the current Sent Items. She is running XP
and IE 7.

Tom