Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)

15 Nov 05 - 02:22 PM (#1605728)
Subject: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: MoorleyMan

Running Outlook Express (version 6) and attempting to Find a Message - after an error occurred during operation, the entire contents of the Deleted Items box "vanished" without warning from its location.
The .DBX file appears still to be there on the hard drive (its size would appear to indicate so), but I cannot access its contents.
(i) Is there a way I can open it and view its contents (in MS Word or whatever?
or (ii) Can the .dbx file be re-imported into OE?

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15 Nov 05 - 03:34 PM (#1605760)
Subject: RE: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: JohnInKansas

In all likelihood the .dbx file has no content.

It's usual to set up OE to empty deleted items when OE is closed, so if you had an "error" that forced the program to close everything in it probably was purged.

As long as there is a "Deleted Items" folder in OE (when you open OE and look) there will be a file named "Deleted Items.dbx" on the hard drive, but it's a database file and has a certain "overhead" that results in a minimum filesize even if the database contains no "records" (individual messages).

Individual messages don't normally get sent to the "Recycle" folder when they're deleted, but there's a remote chance that in the case of an error something might be there.

If the .dbx file you're seeing is in the "email" folder where it belongs, when you open IE it will show you what records (messages) are in the file. If it shows that the file is empty, then it probably is, and the message is gone.

You can make a backup:

In Windows Explorer copy the entire email folder to some other place on your machine.

NOTE: Normally before you make a backup, you should click File|Folders|Compact All, to clean up the database. In this case you SHOULD NOT COMPACT FOLDERS before you make your copy, since this may discard additional "unecessary records."

Restore from backup by opening OE, click File|Import. Choose "email messages," and "Outlook Express 6" for program type. Choose "from remote store" and browse to where you put your copy of the email folder. Once OE finds the email folder you copied, you can choose which folders to import. The "Deleted Items" folder should be there, and if you select it it will be imported back into OE, where you can look to see if there's anything there. My guess would be that the folder will be empty.

NOTE: If you choose to import all of what's in the email folder you copied, every message will be imported and each message will be given a new record number in the folder where OE puts it. You will then have two copies of every message that was in the folder when you go back to look in OE. It can be difficult to tell if two messages with the same subject are different or duplicates except by "hand sorting." This can get teedjus.

John

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15 Nov 05 - 04:20 PM (#1605799)
Subject: RE: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: MoorleyMan

Thanks John.
The .dbx file named Deleted Items on the hard drive is some 370,000KB. (It's roughly in correct proportion to the Sent and other Folder files, so I'd assumed that the relevant number of individual messages are/were still in there!) The question is, are these messages just misplaced and inaccessible due to a quirk within OE, or have they been "first-stage" deleted only? The File, Import procedure won't take me beyond a "files already in use" panel while OE is open of course....
The other problem which has occurred is that suddenly, at almost the same time, a hefty extra near-one-GB of my 3 GB hard drive space was used up over one session (normally FAT32 fluctuates by a meagre amount, but this is massive) - despite the fact that I've had no sudden download activity or anything that could explain it.
I'm wary of defragging in case I lose the dbx contents in doing so.
Where next?

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15 Nov 05 - 09:00 PM (#1606010)
Subject: RE: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: JohnInKansas

MoorleyMan

You can't import from the same file(s) that OE is using. They will, of course, be "in use" any time OE is open.

If you make a copy of the email folder somewhere else on your drive, the copy becomes an "external store" for the files, and OE should be able to import from it. In your case, I suspect that even if OE successfully imports your "Deleted Files.dbx" you won't find anything in it. (Even leaving Windows Explorer pointing to the folder may get a "files in use.")

The .dbx is a database file. Individual messages are records in the database. The only way OE can distinguish one message from another is by record number.

An index in the "overhead" portion of the .dbx file includes a pointer to each separate message. When you "delete" a message, the only action taken is to delete the pointer to that message in the folder from which it was deleted. So far as the folder from which you delete the message is concerned, the file is gone since it doesn't appear in the index, although all of its content remains in that database.

The "pointer value," along with a portion of the header (from/to, subject, etc) is entered in the Deleted Files database, but the rest of the "message" remains in the original folder. As long as the "deleted file" remains visible in the Deleted Files folder in OE, the file can be moved elsewhere simply by moving the pointer to the new location - in the original .dbx file or in another one.

Of course, when the "deleted file" information is moved to the Deleted Files.dbx "folder" the Deleted Files.dbx folder gets a pointer to the information about where the actual file is, allowing it to find the information to let you "undelete."

When you close OE, with normal setup, all of the pointers to data in the "Deleted Files.dbx" folder are actually deleted. This makes all the information in the Deleted Files.dbx database "invisible" the next time you open OE.

The file data that was recorded in the Deleted Files.dbx database remains there, but since the pointer that told where it is was deleted there is no practical way to access it.

The original email message, or at least the "body text," remains in the folder from which it was deleted; but there is no practical way to access it, since the only pointer that says where it is was moved to the Deleted Files.dbx, and the pointer that said where the information about the deletion was moved to within the Deleted Files was deleted when the "message files" disappeared from the Deleted Files folder.

The Deleted Files folder NEVER contains anything except pointers and header scraps. Your message is not there. The rather large filesize you're seeing for the Deleted Files.dbx is because it still contains information about every message you've deleted since the last time you did a "Compact All Folders." That file does not contain any of the complete email messages that were deleted.

The file/folder from which the message was originally deleted may still contain the bits and bytes from the message; but there is no reasonable way to find and reconstruct the message from that location. There is no "file structure" to allow you to read the "gaps where something was part of the file" except by reading individual clusters by physical address - which is something that only hard-core drive maintenance programs are equipped (sometimes) to do.

The only reasonable recovery that I know of that you could try would be to ask the original sender to re-send the lost message. If the sender happened to be a.r. enough to have saved a copy...

When you Compact Folders, OE looks at the header/index information in each .dbx file. If a pointer identifies something as a valid record, the data found at the pointed-to location is copied. All other data is left in "unassigned clusters" which is effectively the same as removing them from the drive. If you do a Compact All Folders, your Deleted Files.dbx "folder" will be cleaned up back to the 59 KB nominal size required for an "empty" .dbx file containing no messages or message information.

All clear? - Don't feel bad.

John

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15 Nov 05 - 10:41 PM (#1606103)
Subject: RE: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: JohnInKansas

Gargoyle -

Norton is able to pick up a deleted file fairly easily, but in this case the requirement is to pick up a deleted (edited) part of a file. When the "edit" is removed from the file, it's essentially a lost space on the drive, and the only way I know of to get it back is to read clusters by physical address and attempt to reconstruct. Because the original file was in a database format, it's not even possible to assume that the missing stuff starts on a cluster boundary, or that it doesn't span more than one cluster.

Norton does NOT make that easy to do in any of the common utilities I've seen recently. Norton may have a full-blown disk analyser, but I haven't seen it for sale in my area.

Norton works miracles, but not this particular one so far as I know.

(I'm willing to reconsider if someone can offer additional detail about how they've done it to recover a deleted fragment of a database file.)

John

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15 Nov 05 - 10:58 PM (#1606109)
Subject: RE: Tech: HELP: retrieving OE messages(DBX)
From: JohnInKansas

MoorleyMan -

Re the "other problem"

Windows Explorer, at least in recent Win versions, allows you to copy a file into the same folder with the original file, using drag-and-drop. If you had a large string of files selected in Win Explorer, and "hiccuped" so that the cursor moved while the mouse button was down, you might get duplicates of all the files that were selected. The duplicate files all go to the bottom of the list, so it's easy to not notice that it's happened.

The duplicates will all be labelled with new filenames "Copy of filename.xxx," It's even possible to do it multiple times and get "Copy 2 of filename" duplicates etc.

In recent versions you can do a Win Explorer search for Filenames Containing "Copy" (without the quotes) and the search result will show all such "duplications." If you're sure that's what they are, you can Ctl-A to "Select All" in the search result window and hit Delete. Older Win Explorer versions may or may not accept wildcards in the "Search For" or "Find" specification, but you should at least be able to tell if that's what produced your large jump in drive content.

It works with folders too, so a folder with a lot of stuff in it could have been duplicated as "Copy n of foldername."

It's the most obvious thing that might cause a huge jump in drive content, although it depends a bit on which Win version you're using.

John

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