inbox outlook express content vanished

Self | 6/20/03 | Self

[BellStar]

I have Norton Personal Firewall 2003 on my home computer and 2003 Anti Virus. Today most of my inbox outlook express content vanished!!?? (1000 +) anyone with any ideas?

[BellStar]

Help!

[doug from upland]

That also happened to me about two weeks ago. My ISP told me that it might be able to be recaptured by reinstalling Outlook Express. Since I can't find my original disk, I didn't do it. I don't know whether that has worked for anyone else.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Weird things happen when you use Norton. There's no fighting it...

[Chad Fairbanks]

You may have the options Unread Only and/or Flagged Only ticked in the View menu. Just select either one of them to untick it, and the messages should reappear.

Otherwise, if this is not the problem, then either rebuild the database files (press Option when launching OE, to initiate it), or transfer all email & settings to a new 'Identity', and bin the old one. Because your current set of Identity files are damaged in some way.

[da_toolman]

The first thing that I would do is see if you could get in touch with Norton tech support and ask them what's up. I'd go with that approach because the state of your system is unknown and perhaps they know something that their system does that they could fix.

But if your inpatient (like me), I'd uninstall Norton's and see what happens. On the one hand, you've lost your email already. On the other hand, you don't know if you've lost it or if it confused Outlook Express and perhaps uninstalling it will hork it up permanently.

I'd also recommend Eudora email, it's got the same features as Outlook and then some, and it shouldn't launch viruses automatically like Outlook tends to do now and then. It's also free.

Good Luck!

[Mike Darancette]

Why didn't you move items out of your inbox to another box after you read them?

I've accidentially deleted my inbox many times.

Was "Sent Items" empty as well? How about "Deleted Items"?

[da_toolman]

That and look into McAfee internet security, much more features than Norton, and seems to be more system friendly.

[Alberta's Child]

This sounds exactly like what happened to our company Outlook folders a few months ago.

Microsoft couldn't even figure out what went wrong -- and we never recovered our Outlook folders, either.

[elbucko]

Weird things happen when you use Norton.

That's for sure. I avoid using their products when possible.

[mlo]

I've seen this happen more than once. It may have nothing to do with Norton.

If, for any reason, Outlook Express is unable to open the Inbox file when it starts it simply creates a new Inbox and proceeds. The old one is not gone. Find the directory where the mailboxes are stored and you should see more than one Inbox (with the new one named "inbox1" or something like it). The old one will be named just "inbox".

I'll see if I can find the steps for recovery written down somewhere, it would be easier than me trying to explain it.

This is a good reason not to leave mail in your Inbox with Outlook Express.

[Greg Packer]

You should have copied all your messages down with pencil and paper. Never trust the internet or computers for communication.

[mlo]

BTW, one reason Express might be unable to open the Inbox file is if your virus program found a virus in it. That's probably what happened.

[FreedomCalls]

Damned Democrats! You have to give a portion of your in-box to the government to distribute to the "in-box disadvantaged" so that people who get less e-mail than you will have more in their in-boxes. It was a part of the "No In-box Left Behind Act of 2003."

[TomServo]

Check Outlooks mail server settings. It'll probably be set to some crap Symantec put in there when you installed AV....

Change the mail server settings to your ISPs recommended settings. This is why I quit using Symantec Anti-Virus. You may want to consider uninstalling it...

[mlo]

Check this out, see if it helps.

http://www.mindspring.com/~oe_oh/recovering_a_lost_message_store.htm

[eggman]

Why do you store 1000+ messages in your inbox? if the messages are important why not organize them into folders and then make sure you backup the folders. You can use rules to have emails from certain senders moved automatically or you can simply drag-n-drop the emails into the proper folders.

Microsoft Outlook & Outlook Express are prone to corruption as the number of emails and the size of the folder increase but I've seen people who have several hundered megabyte email folders in Outlook with no apparent problem until... Once the folder is corrupted it is usually next to impossible to recover the messages.

[xrp]

Outlook Express will automatically perform maintenance on itself at times. So the data might have been archived or deleted.

[SoDak]

As a long-time System Administrator, I must say, Norton products make the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. The manager of one of our locations took it upon himself to load Norton System works on his office PC's. He no longer has administrator access to anything.

[BellStar]

1000+ because I never get around to dealing with it. I have many folders and that content was not deleated by the way. Today I put all the folders on a CD!
100 messages were left in the in box from 2002