Outook Express: folders missing for local folders

[freedda]

I just noticed last night that some of the folders I'd created to hold emails are missing. I don't recall deleting these, and though I may have accidently done this with one, I don't thing I'd do it with two of them. I'm non-technical, but I'm wondering if there is a chance someone could have gotten access to my computer through the internet and erased/copies these folders with email in them? Or, what else may have happened and is there any fix?

Regards, David

[palkot]

I'd say if you deleted the folder yourself, it would be in the "deleted items" folder, unless you dumped that.

Is this problem persistent? Have you tried recreating one of the folders without success?

btw, welcome to the pc guide!

[Sylvander]

Which OS do you have?
Do you know the location of your "Windows Address Book" file?
In Windows 98 on my PC the default folder location is:
"C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\AddressBook"
It's name is of the form:
"[your PC's name].WAB"
Search for "*.WAB" on the C: drive.
Right-click on that file and "Open" it.
Inside you should see the complete address book for all identities.
You may find the cause when studying that.

My son used a CSV file to export and import a copy of this [from his old PC to his new one] and lost ALL the folders. He was left with a great list of files.
When he re-named the existing file with another 3 letter extension [like ".old"] and copied & pasted the file into place it worked fine with no errors in the folder structure in the Address book.

[freedda]

To the two previous responses to my post, my operating system is Windows XP Home and yes, I did delete the "delete" folder since discovering this and without checking contents. I forgot that this is where deleted item go, and instead looked in the Recycle Bin for them.

Well, I'm changing some of my online vendor passwords just to be sure, and of cources none of the emails had credit card info.

David.

[Paul Komski]

Deleting Emails (and some folders) from within OE does not pass the items through the Windows Recycle Bin - only deleting items from within Explorer would do this.

Nor does OE immediately obliterate deleted items (even when emptied from the Deleted Items Folder). All that happens is that the messages within the folders are marked as deleted within the headers of the emails. Such messages are not removed until the folders are compacted.

Thus, as long as you havent compacted folders manually (or in the background automatically), the content of those mails should be recoverable. You can always try opening the .dbx files with notepad - but there was a utility called DBxtract which should have been able to dig them out for you - this has been superceded by DBXpress (http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx) of which I have no experience.