I have outlook express 6 for a email client. I was getting reminded to compact my email messages every one in a while so I said yes and let it compact my messages ... now I don't see any email other than new email that has come in since I compacted the mail. But I did find some .bak files in the recycle bin ... How do I recover them? Does anyone know how to get my messages back? ... Please, help!

On Outlook Express go to tools - options
Then go to maintnance - archive folder. This will tell you where your files with the mail archive are located on the drive. Go there with explorer.
Backup all the .dbx files there to another folder. Delete them from the forlder where they are. Restore files on the recycle bin to the original location (should be the outlook folder stated). Rename all *.bak files to *.dbx

Should restore the database files to the outloook express folder and the files should have the mails because they will be the backup prior to compression.

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Spildit, after that, how does OP merge the new emails from the other saved "boxes" into the recovered boxes?
Maybe reSend them to himself just before recovery process, not retrieving same until after the recovery process?

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better to get someone that knows outlook and the way the data files work to do it. If you stuff it up you will either wipe them out or overwrite a default mail spool or something.

or just save them somewhere, re-setup the account and import them. after they are imported just move the messages to the folders you want. re-sending them is not the way.

If you don't need the new mails or if there is still a copy on te mail server you can just replace the new database files with the old ones and retrieve the new mails from the server.

You can as well set another profile by creating a new account on file-identity and create a new identity. It will create new database for that identity. Go to tools - options - maintnance - archive and check the database path for the new identity. Copy the recovered database (from recycle bin) there. Now you will have one identity for the old mails and another one for the new ones.

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And of course whatever you do BACKUP THE DATABASE FILES FIRST. Both the old ones and the new ones. Make sure you have a copy of them outside your drive. You might want to burn them to a CD/DVD, this way if you mess up and end up over-writting the wrong files you can start over.

Making mistakes here mean loosing the mails that you are trying to recover and the new ones as well.

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