ALL of my emails vanished....

[Richard King]

My inbox is still there, but it is empty. It had emails from over several years in it. Any ideas on finding where they went? There are many very important messages that vanished. Any idea how to get them back?

I just went over to Woot to buy the computer that I mentioned in Great Found Deals, and, of course it is sold out.

[FHSPSU67]

You don't mention the Email client you're using, but if it's Windows Mail or Outlook, I'd search the MS knowledge base with something like "empty inbox."

[LarryFlowers]

Richard

If you are using Outlook do a search for your pst file and then run Scanpst.exe on that file.

My inbox is still there, but it is empty. It had emails from over several years in it. Any ideas on finding where they went? There are many very important messages that vanished. Any idea how to get them back?

I just went over to Woot to buy the computer that I mentioned in Great Found Deals, and, of course it is sold out.

[Marlin Guy]

It's a fairly commom screwup for an Outlook user to accidentally change the view on his Inbox.
View > Arrange By> Current View
Make sure "Messages" is checked.

[Richard King]

Outlook Express. :(
My "Sent Items" is there, as is my "Deleted Items" and all my custom subfolders, but the Inbox is empty. My views is set at "Show All Messages".

Now I'm afraid to open any new emails.

[barryb]

Outlook Express. :(
My "Sent Items" is there, as is my "Deleted Items" and all my custom subfolders, but the Inbox is empty. My views is set at "Show All Messages".

Now I'm afraid to open any new emails.

Could you have logged into your computer under a different user name Richard?

This might help you:

http://ask-leo.com/the_contents_of_my_inbox_disappeared_can_i_recover .html

[Richard King]

Thanks, Barry...
I have only one user name on the computer, as I am the only one that uses it. The article you referred me to states this:

Outlook Express also has the concept of "Identities" which is another way to manage multiple users with separate email accounts without requiring different Windows accounts. Make sure you're using the identity you think you are.

Even if you're not using multiple accounts or identities it's a good idea to search your hard disk for additional "message stores", the place where Outlook Express keeps your folders. Use Window's "Search for Files or Folders..." feature to look for "*.dbx" files. The directories in which you find those files are other message stores that Outlook Express has used. Knowing where they are you can now import their contents into your current mailbox if you wish.
I have found my "inbox.dbx" file as mentioned in the article, but no clue is given as to how to import the contents into the mailbox. Any clues on that?

[barryb]

Thanks, Barry...
I have only one user name on the computer, as I am the only one that uses it. The article you referred me to states this:


I have found my "inbox.dbx" file as mentioned in the article, but no clue is given as to how to import the contents into the mailbox. Any clues on that?

I would do extensive reading right here, and even do a backup before attempting anything Richard.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

[Lee L]

?Yeah, I would definitely make a copy of that inbox file and rename it to something before messing around with anything.

Also, with several years messages, that file should be huge, like a few hundred megabytes at least. MAke sure you are dealing with the correct file.

[Greg Alsobrook]

Richard,

What sort of email account is it? Who hosts it?

[Richard King]

that file should be huge, like a few hundred megabytes at least.700Mb if I recall correctly.

What sort of email account is it? Who hosts it?
Just the standard email that comes with Comcast cable. I have been able to recover about 40 of the couple thousand that were in there. It took hours to just get the 40 out. I have saved the .dbx file, but I think it got at least partially written over. I'll set it up to recover more when I can leave it running for several hours unattended.

[Greg Alsobrook]

So the emails weren't stored on a server? They were on your computer?

[Greg Alsobrook]

Some good tips here for the future... http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

[harsh]

Based on Larry's recent note of database limitations, Richard might be well served to use something other than Outlook Express or Outlook going forward. Obviously this isn't going to help retrieve lost messages, but it may avoid a future failure.

I'm using Eudora (pre-Mozilla) and I've got almost 13,000 messages in my in box and the program is juggling well over 20,000 messages totaling several gigabytes of message text and attachments. Eudora has the rather unique advantage of maintaining attachments as separate decoded files.

Storing the attachments separately makes searching the text of messages quite efficient and allows simple virus scanners to have a good look at the attachment content without requiring any special on-the-fly decoding. The other cool side effect is that you can trash the attachment without losing the text of the message.

[Richard King]

I just downloaded "Thunderbird" last night. I haven't "unpacked" it yet, so it's not loaded yet, but I hope to find time to take a look tonight. I don't think there really was much "vital" in the emails, thankfully, I don't do a lot of important business that way anymore, so may end up just letting it go rather than take the time to retrieve it all. Many of the files that I have looked at came back as text files with yesterday's (the day I retrieved them) date on them, although some are in the proper format.

[Richard King]

Some good tips here for the future... http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

That's where I figured out how to retrieve them from Barry's post above. Thanks.

[Greg Alsobrook]

That's where I figured out how to retrieve them from Barry's post above. Thanks.

Whoops. Pay more attention Greg! :grin:

[Richard King]

Whoops. Pay more attention Greg! :grin:
I'll slap you at the next moderator's convention. ;)

[Lee L]

Richard, you chould be able to import that file right into Thunderbird.