Hi Gerald, The best way to keep from losing any of your emails is saving them outside of OE. Create a folder, OE Notes, for example, in your My Documents folder if you don't have a data partition. Inside of the OE Notes folder create subfolders with the same names as your folders in OE. Now, you'll have to move / save all your email to these folders which will be a long & tedious job but, you'll never lose your email again unless you have a harddrive crash. Below are steps for saving email outside of OE using the My Documents folder & a folder named Recipes. I will also include a download link for a program called, DBxTract that will include instructions that can make this job a whole lot easier.
DBxTract download link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2471715/DBxTract.zip Please let me know when you get this download so, I can remove it from my Dropbox Account. Using Outlook Express below is 1 set of steps on how to save an email to the Recipe folder in your My Documents folder. 1. With the email you want to save highlighted / selected, press Alt + F, for the file menu, arrow down to save as, & press enter. Or press Alt + F, then press the letter, A. 2. A dialogue opens & you can change the name of the message here. 3.A. Tab 1 time to the save as combobox & right here this is where you choose which format you want to save the email as. Your choices are Mail *.eml, Text file *.txt, & Unicode Text File *.txt. Personally I save email in both .EML & .TXT formats but, you can't save them in both formats at the same time so, you have to save the email 2 times, once in each format. 3.B. We will use the .EML format for now. So, you are in the save as combobox, arrow down to Mail *.eml, tab 3 times to the save in combobox, arrow up or down to the My Documents folder, with the My documents folder highlighted, tab 3 more times to, folder view list view. This is a list of folders in your My Documents folder. 4. Arrow down to your Recipe folder & press enter to open the folder, now tab to the save button, & press the spacebar. Your recipe has now been saved in your Recipe folder. If you want to save this same email as a text file, your Recipe folder has already been selected so, you don't have to navigate to the Recipe folder. 5. Press Alt + F, then press the letter, A, tab 1 time to the save as combobox, press the letter T, for text file or arrow down to the Text File *.txt option, tab 1 time to save, & press the spacebar or enter. When you are in the save as combobox you can use first letter navigation instead of arrowing to your format of choice. Go look in your recipe folder to see if your messages have been saved the way you want them saved. Saving email outside of your email client takes some practice & getting used to but, it is well worth the extra work. If your email client was to become corrupted for whatever reason, having your email saved outside you won't lose your emails. Personally I don't have any emails saved in Outlook Express. Hope this helped. Take care. Mike This email was sent from my, iBarstool. ----- Original Message ----- From: Gerald Levy To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, December 01, 2014 12:08 PM Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Recovering Lost Outlook Express Messages Thanks so much for setting me on the right path. I googled "restoring .bak files to .dbx in outlook express" and found a web site that provided step-by-step instructions for recovering the lost email messages. Fortunately, all the .bak files were still in my recycle bin, and following the instructions, I was able to locate the main folder containing all the corresponding .dbx files. But, as you say, the whole procedure is quite complicated and involves a lot of file renaming. I had no idea that compacting all folders could result in messages inadvertently being deleted. So I'm wondering. Is there any way to prevent email messages from inadvertently being deleted by performing a compact all procedure? I know that OE automatically prompts you periodically to perform a compact all procedure, but is it safe to continue doing so? Gerald ----- Original Message ----- From: "Flor Lynch" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2014 9:42 AM Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Recovering Lost Outlook Express Messages > Gerald, > I'll give a sketch or summary here. > The .bak files (in your Recycle Bin, if you didn't already empty it) are > the backup copies of your Outlook Express folders. If you could google > .bak to .dbx or similar, it may become quite clear what you need to do to > restore them. It's complicated to explain it (and I'm running out of time, > and haven't had to do this for thirteen years). > > It's quite well-known that mailbox folders are more likely to become > corrupted during compaction than at almost any other time, which is why > Microsoft introduced the backup feature whereby past copies of OE folders > are sent to the Recycle Bin as .bak files during compaction. Using Windows > Explorer, you could then copy (or cut and paste) one of these .babk files > to a location perhaps an empty spot on your desktop or one on your hard > drive that you can identify. There, in windows Explorer, you can rename it > with .dbx as the suffix instead of .bak, F2 key then edit. enter when > done. Copy (or cut) the file, for pasting. > > If you don't know the file path where the OE folder was originally stored, > you may find this out using the Store Folder... button in the Maintenance > Options therein. > > that done, stay out of Outlook Express, and locate the corrupted OE folder > or file with windows Explorer or the Run dialogue: Delete (from the file > or list view) the corrupted folder; and paste the copied content of your > copied OE file/folder there. > > Now, reopen Outlook Express, and check if it took. There is no guarantee > that it will work, and it is not the only way that might work. However, > googling will show you that this problem has been the bugbear of many OE > users in the past. > > Some other points: > > I would put all folders at the same level as the Inbox, so that the Inbox > does not have subfolders. > > Another way to repair the missing .dbx files, is: Empty your Inbox of > existing messages and transfer them to some other folder you will create > or have created in outlook Express. Rename the .dbx file whose messages > you want to restore, OUTSIDE CLOSED Outlook Express, to Inbox.dbx. Now, > reopen Outlook Express. With luck, your new Inbox will have the missing > messages restored. Now, in outlook Express, you can move those messages > from your Inbox to another folder you will make or have made for the > purpose. > > Repeat this process as often as necessary. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gerald Levy" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, December 01, 2014 12:11 PM > Subject: [JAWS-Users] Recovering Lost Outlook Express Messages > > >> >> This is certainly a strange one. Yesterday, as I always do at the end of >> the month, I performed a compact all folders procedure in Outlook Express >> on my XP system. I have 82 folders in various categories which hold all >> the messages I have decided to save. But for some reason, all the >> messages in the last 12 folders on the list were somehow permanently >> deleted, because they were all there before I performed the compact all >> procedure. The first 67 folders appear to be intact, and I did not lose >> any messages from them. Is there any way to recover the lost messages >> from the last 12 folders? Or are they gone forever? I already tried a >> system restore to no avail. Thanks. >> >> Gerald >> >> For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: >> http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ >> > > > For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: > http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
