Recover accidentally deleted emails in Outlook Express

People delete their emails to avoid increasing the size of their Outlook Express Inbox, later they realize that they have deleted some important emails for which they do not have a backup. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry, there is a way to recover those deleted Outlook Express emails.

The .dbx and .mbx files are used by Outlook Express for storing files. Each mailbox in Outlook Express has its own file with the extension of .dbx (like inbox.dbx, drafts.dbx etc), and all emails from a given mailbox are kept in that one file. Together these are saved in a folder named as store folder which is located deep inside "Documents and Settings" folder.

The major security threat to any mail storage files is data loss. The general loss of emails could be due to virus, system format, and accidental deletion of email.

When you accidentally delete an email in Outlook Express immediately EXIT Outlook Express and DO NOT try to COMPACT the email folders.

When emails are deleted they are not removed from the mailbox (.dbx) file, actually the emails are still inside the dbx file as free space. Outlook Express tries to remove these deleted emails physically from time to time using its “Compact” feature. Compact option, removes the deleted files, which in turn will speed-up the Outlook Express performance, but the deleted emails gets wiped off making them irrecoverable.

Do not use Outlook Express to avoid any writing operation on the dbx files. Immediately run DBX repair software to locate the deleted emails and recover them.

Disk Doctors Email Recovery Software repairs damaged *.dbx files and recovers *.eml files once recovery process is over. The recovered .eml files simply can be imported by drag and drop function to a new folder inside Outlook Express. This dbx repair tool is designed to recover accidentally deleted Outlook Express email messages from any "dbx / mbx" archive or to repair damaged *.dbx files.

Demo version of the Email Recovery software is available for free download

Some preventive steps to avoid data loss from Outlook Express

Always keep your inbox manageable, transfer your emails to different folders
Delete emails those are not essential. If you have accidentally deleted any of the vital emails, don’t panic, try Email Recovery Software to recover them back
Do not use the computer while the compact process is in progress
Maintain backups of your store folders (dbx) regularly.

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