Email Inbox and Sent Items wiped!

Vegmuncher

I use AVG free edition and last night whilst I was surfing the net I left my email Outlook Express Open whilst I was doing it, and was surprised to find when I returned to it that my entire Inbox and Emails Sent box had been wiped completely clean of emails.

No doubt I should back up my emails, which I don't. This is not going to be convenient because I often search back for emails - both in and sent.

Anyone any idea what happened. The free AVG version does not allow technical support, although I did email their sales dept and they said there is no way that AVG could have done this. This conflicts with some forum threads I found after Googling for a while - it appears that several AVG users have had this happen.

Any know what might have happened. I don't suppose for a minute I will be able to recover the items.

fwor

Try doing a search for all files ending .dbx, modified yesterday, including hidden and system files, and you should find the files that hold your email folders.

If you find two or more sets of .dbx file, check that OE is looking in the right place (i.e. at the large files with all your thousands of emails in!).

mattogier

Too late now I know BUT - try setting the "delete messages from server" to after say 30 days - this way you will be able to get your last 30 days incomming email back.

ALSO - Suggest getting a googlemail account (free and unlimited capacity) and setting up a couple of filters on Outlook (or Thunderbird if you are sensible) to BCC all in and out mail to this account - that way you'll always have access to ALL your emails.

Oblivion

Vegmuncher wrote: »

I use AVG free edition and last night whilst I was surfing the net I left my email Outlook Express Open whilst I was doing it, and was surprised to find when I returned to it that my entire Inbox and Emails Sent box had been wiped completely clean of emails.

Go to Inbox, and then in the menu select VIEW and then check that SHOW ALL MESSAGES is selected.

Dave.

Vegmuncher

Oblivion - yes it is set to "show all messages"

Fwor - how do I do that search please - I do not seem to be able to do it from Outlook Express - do I have to go to "Control Centre" or somewhere like that?

Mattogier - can you tell me please how to alter that setting as you suggested?

I will take your advice on the Googlemail account - that sounds excellent.

Many thanks for all the suggestions - perhaps there is hope!

fwor

From the Start menu: Start, Search..., For Files or Folders..., All Files and Folders, put *.dbx in the filename field, Look in: Hard Drives, Advanced Options: Search System Folders, Search Hidden files and folders, Search subfolders.

It took me longer to type all that than it did to do the search!

Vegmuncher

Hi

I have done that and have a list of files on screen but I do not know what to do next. I tried opening one and it offered me a list of programs to open it into - not including Outlook Express.

Should I be trying to get some of these files to Outlook Express. A couple of them look promising, saying "Sent Items" or "Inbox".

What does .dbc stand for, please, and what was the "*" for? I am sure it would help me if I understood what I am doing. I am finding this quite exciting, by the way, it is somewhere I have not been before!

fwor

Not time to get excited yet, sadly. If you find only one set of seven .dbx files you're probably out of luck. I was thinking that there would be more than one set and OE had got it's configuration confused and was looking at the wrong set.

The "*" is interpreted by Windows Search as "any sequence of characters", so it will find every file that ends with an extension of .dbx

The .dbx extension is just a convention that Microsoft use to signify a specific type of file - in the same way that they chose the .doc extension for Word files (before they changed it all again in Word 2007). You can't open it directly because OE wasn't designed to operate like that.

So... did you only find seven .dbx files, each with a different name, each only a few tens of KB in size?

If so it's not looking good...

Vegmuncher

I found 9 files - for instance "Inbox - 344,590 KB"

Donnie

Answers to be found here, along with other useful info.

mattogier

Vegmuncher wrote: »

Mattogier - can you tell me please how to alter that setting as you suggested?

Not sure in OE as have not used it for years now - it will be in the account settings - where you enter info as to account details, pop mailbox etc (Settings??)