I'm running Outlook Express 5.5 on a Windows NT (2000) platform. Yesterday Outlook froze up while I was receiving emails to my inbox, I had to manually shut it down via the task manager. When I restarted Outlook, it gave me an error message and wouldn't receive incoming mail. All of the files in my inbox also wouldn't display. I still have a 2 GB inbox.dbx file stored, so I'm guessing it was corrupted. I made a backup copy to an external drive, cut and pasted the original .dbx file from the Outlook folder to another place on my PC, and attempted to extract the files using the free Macallan tool. Apparently it didn't work. I keep reading that using Outlook's compact feature will only make the problem worse. Is there a good tool out there for me to extract the files from my inbox.dbx file and restore my inbox?
2 GB is the design limit for a DBX file. Once you hit that OE can't handle the file at all. The following programs (all by the same author) have had good success extracting messages although there's no guarantee that they will get all the messages. DBXtract - http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx DBXpress - http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx DBXtend - http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtend/Default.aspx Note that the cheapest of the programs can take DAYS to process or large DBX file. -- Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm "OutlookGuy" wrote in message news:D3B16024-1CA4-4EF9-A0E5-40305B526E87@microsoft.com... > I'm running Outlook Express 5.5 on a Windows NT (2000) platform. > Yesterday > Outlook froze up while I was receiving emails to my inbox, I had to > manually > shut it down via the task manager. When I restarted Outlook, it gave > me an > error message and wouldn't receive incoming mail. All of the files in > my > inbox also wouldn't display. > > I still have a 2 GB inbox.dbx file stored, so I'm guessing it was > corrupted. > I made a backup copy to an external drive, cut and pasted the original > .dbx > file from the Outlook folder to another place on my PC, and attempted > to > extract the files using the free Macallan tool. Apparently it didn't > work. > I keep reading that using Outlook's compact feature will only make the > problem worse. Is there a good tool out there for me to extract the > files > from my inbox.dbx file and restore my inbox?
Thanks for the suggestion. I wish I would have known that before hitting the 2GB mark. So is extraction the only fix? There's no way I can randomly delete some emails from the inbox dbx file in order to get it to load as normal?
"OutlookGuy" wrote in message news:2DF37A8A-D6CA-48C3-B007-EBCAAC45A0FE@microsoft.com... > Thanks for the suggestion. > > I wish I would have known that before hitting the 2GB mark. So is > extraction the only fix? There's no way I can randomly delete some emails > from the inbox dbx file in order to get it to load as normal? Nope. -- Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM www.fjsmjs.com Do not reply with email
