I was deleting my deleted mail in outlook express and accidently
deleted ALL.  Can they be recovered?

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Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 29 Aug 2002 07:11 PDT

Hello:
   Which version of Outlook Express do you use?
Do you use compression on Outlook folders?
Which Windows do you use?
I recommend you to take a backup of your mail files before do
anything, if you don't use compression on your folders, it's possible
you can recover your messages.
   
Regards.

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Clarification of Question by milagrodar-ga on 29 Aug 2002 08:35 PDT

In my windows 98, I go to "mail" after reading mail, I put email into
delete.  I had 7 pages of deleted emails (outlook express) and needed
to get rid of some of them so I was deleting one by one perminently
the emails I didn't want any longer.  I clicked on the "delete all" BY
MISTAKE.  Is there a way I can retrieve the emails I wanted to keep?

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Clarification of Question by milagrodar-ga on 29 Aug 2002 08:39 PDT

P.S. Where do I find the Outlook Express version? All of this is new
to me so don't know how to compress or how to backup my mail files.

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Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 29 Aug 2002 08:58 PDT

Hello:
 To backup your mail files, go to your C:\WINDOWS\Application
Data\Identities\{512153E0-44AC-11D5-82EB-D531E7FBC93A}\Microsoft\Outlook
Express

Below the directory Identities you can have any value as {}, enter on
it, or if you want and have disk space, copy all the directory
c:\windows\application data to a new location.

Inside these directories are .dbx files which contain your messages.

I will keep investigating.

Hello, milagrodar:

  I think have found the answer to your problem, is called DBXtract:
  
DBXtract  
http://chattanooga.net/~scochran/DBXtract.htm

"The purpose of this mode is to recover messages that have been
deleted from the deleted items folder. With the DBX files, Microsoft
chops each message into 512 byte pieces. When a message is deleted
from the deleted items folder (that has not yet been compacted), then
OE removes the first 4 bytes of each piece, so it is not possible to
recover a message in its entirety. However, with this version of
DBXtract, one can recover from the deleted items.dbx file, such pieces
that are still there and reassemble what is left of the pieces. To
accomplish this, check the Recover Mode box. Then browse to the
deleted items.dbx file and set the output directory. Then click the
Extract button. A set of text files will then be extracted into the
output directory. For the sake of completeness, all fragments will be
recovered. A lot will have the filename NoSubject appended by a
number. Most of these will be redundant and can be deleted (Make sure
the by Subject check box is checked when using the Recover Mode
feature, so one can distinguish between them). Images and other
attachments will be incomplete and likely irrecoverable, but text and
message headers should be largely intact."

Be aware that this program will work well only if you don't have used
your deleted items folder after remove the deleted messages, in any
other case, maybe you can't recover all your lost messages.

Search Strategy

recover deleted outlook messages .dbx
://www.google.com/search?q=recover+deleted+outlook+messages+.dbx&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0

Regards.

milagrodar-
If you use Outlook Express, you would probably open Internet Explorer
first, then click onto the "Mail" button on the right side of the tool
bar that runs across the top of the screen. Then click onto "Read
Mail" Once inside the Outlook Express Mail application, click onto the
"Help" button, and click onto "About Outlook Express". That will tell
you the version.(I say "probably" because different internet service
providers set up mail differently... above mentioned way is the more
typical way)

If you are not using Outlook Express, please let us know what you use.
Examples are: Outlook, Eudora, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail. Do you use AOL for
your internet service provider? Do you even use Internet Explorer as
you web browser?

Then someone may better be able to explain how to restore lost mail, -
If it is possible with the system you are using.