Recover E-mails from Outlook Express?

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InvalidUsername

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My dad uses Outlook Express (I hate it), I had reformatted the hard drive and forgot to back up his e-mails. I had saved everything else. The thing that I hate about outlook express is, it's not web based, appearently the e-mails go to your computer (you can view them without internet, if your internet is working, which is the only cool think about Outlook Express) We had set up his bloody e-mail agian, same account as last time, but the e-mails aren't there. They all been erased. He had important e-mails in there.

Now, if he would listen to me to use Yahoo! or Hotmail or something like that, you wouldn't lose your e-mails when you reformat your computer or whatever.

Anyway, how do you get them back? I know it's possible.

Edit: were running Windows XP: Home Edition
 
think about it this way

He had his email on his computer, you deleted everything on the hard drive and reinstalled windows....

Where are they?

not on the machine

Really it depends on his email providers settings and the server settings. I would imagine if he uses his companies email he would be able to speak with the email admin and check if anything is still stored on the server...assuming outlook was not set up to delete emails upon receiving them...

Who is his email provider?

Best Regards,
Francisco
 
Francisck said:
think about it this way

He had his email on his computer, you deleted everything on the hard drive and reinstalled windows....

Where are they?

not on the machine

Really it depends on his email providers settings and the server settings. I would imagine if he uses his companies email he would be able to speak with the email admin and check if anything is still stored on the server...assuming outlook was not set up to delete emails upon receiving them...

Who is his email provider?

Best Regards,
Francisco
Click to expand...

Actually, they were in Outlook express, they weren't saved to his computer. But they were in Outlook Express. We went on his Outlook Express on another computer, after I had reinstalled Windows, but his e-mails are gone, he is now recieving e-mails again. Are server is Aliant (Eastern Canada).
 
As Fransisco said, it's a lost cause. Any remnants that could *possibly* have been recovered using Recovery Software would have been written over during the fresh install. Sorry.

Why not Archive and/or make a backup of your mail database? Exporting to a .pst file works, too - I do one about every 3 weeks; that way if I ever have to re-install for whatever reason, after I reload Office 2k3, I just set up my account again and Import the file and good as new.
 
Actually, they were in Outlook express, they weren't saved to his computer. But they were in Outlook Express.
Click to expand...

Right. The mail was in Outlook Express. Outlook Express was saved on your Hard Drive. You reformated your Hard Drive. Was there ---> not there now.

Take a piece of paper mail and burn it. Do you expect to ever recover it? Same thing as what happened in your case.
 
Theres a slight chance depending on how he has his email server setup for outlook. With Charter you can set it up so that it saves your email even though you have downloaded them into outlook. But by default the settings deletes them. If so, there gone.
 
Why is e-mail from outlook express go onto your hdd, but other e-mail clients like Yahoo!, GMail, Hotmail etc. web based, so you can go on from any computer and check them and they won't be deleted.

There is a simular web mail client called webmail (Aliant) where my dad can log in and his e-mail from outlook express is there but not saved to his hdd, but it only shows new incoming mail and other nmail is deleted in 60 days. Since webmail also has his mail, same mail as in his Outlook Express, if I worked for Aliant, working withthe network or whatever, I would be able to retrive them (probably possible) but it would take a lot of work, to recover all of ones e-mails.
 
Because Outlook is a one-stop email client, whereas things like Yahoo and other web-based ones are there to compliment services the parent company has (yahoo, google, gmail, etc.). Outlook is part of a stand-alone program (MS Office) that isn't dependent on other products to run (search engines, etc.). When you set up an Outlook account, you're not setting up an actual email account. Instead, you're telling Outlook how to access an email account you already have (smtp/pop settings, username, password).

For example, I have an @comcast.net email account. If I log on to comcast.net and sign in, I can view my email, save/delete, move to different folders, etc., but unless I delete it, it's still there if I log off and log in again later. Now if I open Outlook and Send/Receive, the following happens: Outlook signs in to comcast.net, sees new email, then 'takes' it and places it into it's (Outlook's) mailbox. If I logged back in to comcast.net after Outlook did it's thing, all the emails that were there are now gone, because Outlook basically told the comcast server "Give these to me and let me delegate them out, you don't need them". Look at it as "nothing was deleted from comcast, the mail was just moved".
 
There is a slight chance he might recover mails, i do recovery often and you'd be surprise at how many things you can recover using GetdataBack or ontrack Recovery.

@ the OP. If you do recovery, search for .dbx <-- that's outlook express database mails

@imsati,
Why not Archive and/or make a backup of your mail database? Exporting to a .pst file works, too
Click to expand...
The above is for MS Outlook only, not for Outlook Express.
OE can only export to MS outlook but not export mails to a folder, for that you'd have to browse to "\Application Data\Identities\blah blah\outlook express "
and backup the files in that folder, or just google for a program that backs up mails
 
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