i lost my folders in my outlook express inbox. how can i retrieve them?

i lost my folders in my outlook express inbox. how can i retrieve them? Please be more specific. You can't have a folder in the Inbox. You can have folders as sub-folders of the Inbox, or any other folder. If this is the case, is there a + in front of the Inbox? Click it. Look in Deleted Items as well. If you deleted them, they will be sub-folders of Deleted Items until you empty it. Post back with updated info.Bruce Hagen ~ MS-MVP [Mail]

they were subfolders in the inbox. i recently emptied the deleted folder. i would not have deleted all the sub folders without realizing i was doing it. i am a nivice but i am aware of the deleting process. the only folder with info in it is the sent folder with old e-mail sent in the past.

The e-mail you see in Sent Items. Is this mail you would have thought you deleted a long time ago? If yes, it almost sounds like you switched to an old identity. File | Identities | Manage Identities. Is there more than one listed? If yes, switch to the other identity. If no, read on............ The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), or bloated folders. More on that below. Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?: http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact Why Mail Disappears: http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone About File Corruption: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx Recovery tools: If you are running XP/SP2, or SP3, and are fully patched, then you should have a backup of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, (or possibly the message store), copied as bak files. To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the location of the Message Store. Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run. In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under Start | Control Panel | Folder Options | View. Close OE and then in Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the missing, or empty, folder and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted later once you have successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the Message Store. Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the *exact* same name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak. Eg: If the file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open the new folder and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty, continue on to the next step. First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If there is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx. If it isn't already in the message store, open the Recycle bin and right click on the bak file for the folder in question and click Restore. Open the message store back up and change the file extension from .bak to .dbx. Close the message store and open OE. The messages should now be back in the folder. If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and delete the old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop. If you do not have bak copies of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, then: DBXpress run in Extract From Disk Mode is the best chance to recover messages: http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx And see: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4 A general warning to help avoid this in the future: Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become corrupted. Create your own user defined folders for storing mail and move your mail to them. Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created folders under 300MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible. Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer of protection that eats up CPUs, slows down sending and receiving, and causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs, account setting changes and has even been responsible for lose of messages. Your up-to-date A/V program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3 And backup often. Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB Freeware) http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx Bruce Hagen ~ MS-MVP [Mail]

Why it happens: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx Recovering the missing data: http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx (#2 and #4) and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918069 (see Notes section under Resolution section; Please note that you do NOT need to install KB923694 or KB918766 if your computer is fully-patched at Windows Update!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even greater functionality than DBXtract) http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Avoiding Such Corruption in Future: - Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local folders created for this purpose. - Empty Deleted Items folder daily. - Frequently perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm - Do not cancel Automatic Compacting, should it occur, and do not attempt to close OE via Task Manager or shutdown your machine if Automatic Compacting is taking place. - Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause corruption (i.e., loss of messages) and provides no additional protection: Why you don't need your anti-virus to scan your email http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm~Robear Dyer (PA Bear) ~ MS MVP (IE, Mail, Security, Windows & Update Services) since 2002 ~ Disclaimer: MS MVPs neither represent nor work for Microsoft

sorry, they were ( about 8 )sub-folders of the inbox, with significant content. Yes the "Inbox" did have + in front prior to them missing. When I went in e-mail today their was a -. Not a case of deleted either. Apparantly the system somehow is hidding or deleted them.

Please start your own new thread instead of hijacking this eight month old one. Then tell us exactly what problem you had. Thank you.Bruce HagenMS-MVP Oct. 1, 2004 ~ Sept. 30, 2010Imperial Beach, CA

Who are you? The last post in this thread was 8 months ago! It is likely that your inbox.dbx or the sub-folders have corrupted. You need to discover which have and then try to recover the files before they get permanently lost. Your Inbox and Sent Items folders should only hold messages awaiting relocation until you move them on. Do not have any sub-folders of the Inbox. In the next paragraph I describe a way to help to safeguard against loss of messages in the two system created folders, which are so prone to folder corruption and loss of messages.In Outlook Express place the cursor on Local Folders and select File, Folder, New and name your new Folder. AAInbox and AASent may suit your requirements. These names place the folders first in the list of Local Folders. Move any messages from your Inbox and your Sent Items folders to the newly created Local Folders. Repeat the process if you have created any sub-folders of either folder.You will still need to watch the overall size of individual folders, as too large a folder results in the system struggling to handle the folder. File corruption occurs most often when the compaction process is interrupted or if any read or write to file is taking place when Outlook Express is closed abruptly. This tends to happen more often with over large files. Others define a maximum file size by specifying a size e.g. 300mb as part of their recommendation. In my view this can be misleading as the size can be significantly less. It all depends on the capacity of the system to handle large files and the time it takes to accomplish any task undertaken.You can control the Compacting process by doing it at a time that suits you at any time before the count reaches 100. The number being the number of times Outlook Express has been closed since Outlook Express was compacted. Compacting some and not all folders is disregarded for this purpose.In Outlook Express place the cursor on Local Folders and select File, Work Offline followed by File, Folder, Compact All. Do not attempt to interrupt or stop the process until it has completed. Close Outlook Express when it has completed but do not rush closure as changes will still be being made for a period after the compaction process appears to have completed.When compaction has completed check your Outlook Express folders are as they should be. Most likely you will not see any difference with the missing folders still missing but there will be one key difference. All the files on the disk recognised by the Outlook Express identity will have the same or virtually the same time and date, namely the time that they were compacted. Any other files created by Outlook Express at the same location i.e. in the same folder will have an earlier date and time and may be recoverable. Note it is important to be certain that the file path is identical as if the last folder in the file path is different you will have found files relating to a different Outlook Express identity. The next step is to try to find your missing files. Select Start, Control Panel, Folder Options, View, Advanced Settings and verify that the box before "Show hidden files and folders" is checked and "Hide protected operating system files" is unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the second item. You should also make certain that the box before "Hide extensions for known file types" is not checked. Now enter Windows Explorer and, if necessary, change the View settings for My Computer to Details. Check to see if the Date Modified is one of the column headers. If it is not displayed select View, Choose Details and click in the box before Date Modified and on OK. It should now appear as a column header. Apply these changes to all folders. Next make sure that Outlook Express is closed. You can now search My Computer with "*.db*" without quotes as the search criteria and the result should be all Outlook Express files on your computer. Note the date / time stamp on the files. An original inbox will appear as inbox.dbx. If the inbox folder has corrupted you will see the next inbox created as inbox(01).dbx, then inbox(02).dbx etc. The file extension can also appear as .dbt i.e. a temporary version of the file.The addition of numerals occurs because, when Outlook Express through folders.dbx is unable to see a system created folder such as the Inbox it automatically creates a new folder. As Windows cannot have two files with the same file name in a folder it adds (01) on the first occasion this happens and so on if it happens again. All folder names are stored in folders.dbx and this folder controls the whole folder structure and recognition of it's component parts for an Outlook Express identity. You can substitute any folder name for inbo but you should omit the last letter of the name and and substitute an asterisk. The asterisk * is a wild card and their use are an essential when looking for missing files. Please let me know the results of your search providing precise details including dates/ times modified of all versions of inbox and the missing sub-folder files. It may be possible to trick the system into recognising some of the files once more. Otherwise it may necessary to use a recovery tool. Hope this helps, Gerry Cornell

See www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4 for recovery techniques andwww.oehelp.com/backup.aspx for background. steve <G-ma1> wrote in message news:Email removed for privacy...sorry, they were ( about 8 )sub-folders of the inbox, with significant content. Yes the "Inbox" did have + in front prior to them missing. When I went in e-mail today their was a -. Not a case of deleted either. Apparantly the system somehow is hidding or deleted them.

@Bruce: This OP got a bum steer [1] in an OL forum; cf. http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/outlookacct/thread/62ba0277-4fde-4628-b989-adca5f9bc99b/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[1] link directing him here was http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xpnetwork/threads?filter=answered vs. the unfilteredhttp://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xpnetwork/threads~Robear Dyer (PA Bear) ~ MS MVP (IE, Mail, Security, Windows & Update Services) since 2002 ~ Disclaimer: MS MVPs neither represent nor work for Microsoft