OE database error

[Cosmin-Coral]

I had a look at a friend's machine a while back - Win 98/OE6
Whenever she opened OE it was blank, non-responding, required Ctrl/Alt/Del to close it.
After finding a semi-useful MS knowledge base article, & looking through the registry, etc ... it proved to be only the inbox which had a problem, all the other folders were OK.

So ... moved inbox.dbx to a subfolder, restarted OE, reimported all of inbox, it works fine.

Problem is it's happened again twice since, and although it's now only a five minute job to fix it, it's a nusiance & shouldn't be happening. I'd like to be able to sort it once and for all (wouldn't we always :rolleyes: ).
She does have a very large inbox, but much of it is in subfolders.

Bonus point - I now know where to find my own emails & back them up regularly :cool: .

[mjc]

She does have a very large inbox, but much of it is in subfolders.

Is she in the habit of letting a week's worth of stuff accumulate?

Does she move old messagess out to other folders?

Does she compact the folders?

[Paul Komski]

but much of it is in subfolders

Not a great idea. Get her to create other folders/subfolders under Local Folders but keep the inbox as empty and compacted as possible. If there are inbox subfolders the inbox can never be properly emptied.

Another way of dealing with a corrupted inbox (once any mails in it have been moved/copied elsewhere) is to simply delete or rename the inbox.dbx file. The next time OE is opened a brand new inbox is created and any corruption will "have been cut away".