HELP to recover deleted e-mail - win 98se

[Da Mail Man]

greetings all,
my cousin (using windows 98se) contacted me and said that he accidentally deleted all the e-mails in his "in" box in outlook express. aparently, while having some trouble with his mouse and while outlook express was opened to his "in" box. he accidentally clicked on "compact folder" (or similar listing) at the top of the page in outlook express and as such, all of his e-mail is MISSING.

he did not delete them nor are they anywhere to be found! where did they go?....how does he get them back?....please advise and thanks!!

 

[Da Mail Man]

.......anyone?

 

[Platinum]

Hey man, all you gotta do is a little research and you'll find the information. I did it for ya this time though.


Why You Should Let Outlook Express Compact Messages When It Asks You

When you close Outlook Express, a message pops up and states To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes..

The message is vague, which makes it no less alarming. What's going on? Does Outlook Express want to delete your old emails? Or is this a virus masquerading as something legit?
What Should You Do?

Don't Interrupt the Process

It is important that the process of compacting folders is not interrupted.
If allowed to finish, compacting ensures that your Outlook Express runs smoothly and disk space is not wasted in too excessive a manner.

Help! I've Lost All My Mail, The Messages Just Disappeared!

If the compaction process was interrupted or the Outlook Express message store files get corrupted for another reason, Outlook Express may start to empty folders. Your messages probably are not gone, however.

You can build a safeguard into the Outlook Express compaction process with a patch that backs up all data before compacting.

Even if you had not yet installed the patch, message recovery could be easy:

* Exit Outlook Express.
* Look in your Windows Recycle Bin for a .dbx file corresponding to the folder from which mail is missing.
* Restore the .dbx file.
* Start Outlook Express.

To recover mail from an already corrupted message store, use one of the Outlook Express recovery tools, maybe ScanDBX.

I got the information from here. There's some more information on the page but hopefully that should be enough, let me know how it goes.

 

[munkyeetr]

Unfortunately it doesn't look good for recovery:

This is taken from the link below:

However, if you were to delete a large number of email messages in Outlook Express, and at the same time observe the size of the DBX files from which they were deleted, you would note that the DBX files do not reduce in size after the deletion. This is because the deleted messages are not actually purged from the DBX file until such time as the DBX files are "compacted" (meaning all the space taken up by deleted messages is removed and the file is compressed to hold only "active" messages). File compacting is controlled in Outlook Express under the "File / Folders menu". If your DBX files have been compacted then any deleted messages they contain have been permanently erased and are no longer recoverable.

Read the whole page here.

 

[Platinum]

Oh, I completely didn't see the part about how he accidentally deleted his emails BEFORE compacting it. I thought it was just compacted and some e-mails were gone. Well, if that's the case, I hope none of those e-mails were very important. If they are there are services out there that can recover your e-mail but you'll hafta pay. =\

 

[Da Mail Man]

Oh, I completely didn't see the part about how he accidentally deleted his emails BEFORE compacting it. I thought it was just compacted and some e-mails were gone. Well, if that's the case, I hope none of those e-mails were very important. If they are there are services out there that can recover your e-mail but you'll hafta pay. =\

..thanks for the reply as i just got back to this. like i stated, he accidentally clicked on some "menu item" (?) in outlook express at the top someplace saying something about compacting his e-mail messages. when he accidentally clicked the mouse, all e-mail messages in the "in" box were gone and they weren't even in the deleted folder of outlook express...i haven't heard from him yet but, was going to ask him about the size of the dbx files in outlook express as well as to see if there were any in the recycle bin.....i was in a hurry and i humbly appolgize for not getting to do the research before posting......at this point and after reading the current posts here, i am now confused!!...