Outlook Express stores all its mail folders, messages, local IMAP, and all of your subscribed newsgroups and messages in a folder called as Store folder (located on your hard drive). When you open a Store folder, you will find a set of DBX files related to different message folders like Inbox.dbx, Drafts.dbx etc. There is another file bearing the name Folders.dbx. It is an index of the entire store folder. If you are an Outlook Express user, then you should maintain this Folders.dbx file in good health. If it gets corrupt, you might encounter several problems like emails getting deleted randomly or OLEXP can often stop displaying folders for existing .dbx files. In such situations, you can rename the Folders.dbx file and restart the Outlook Express to rebuild the damaged file. If you are unable to get deleted e-mails by implementing this strategy, you can then consider using a deleted email recovery software.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you open Outlook Express 5.5 to view your Inbox folder, and find that only e-mail messages which you haven't read are listed.

Cause

The above behavior can be witnessed in the following conditions:

If the view has been changed to 'Hide Read Messages'. In this situation, Outlook Express filters messages which you have read from your Inbox and displays only the number of unread messages. Another reason for missing messages can be corruption in the Folders.dbx file.

Resolution

The following steps would let you address the above stated causes, thus assisting you in performing deleted mail recovery:

On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Show All Messages In case of Folders.dbx corruption, you can execute the following steps to rename it:

1.Click Start, go to Find, and click Files or Folders 2.In the Named box, click Folders.dbx 3.In the Look in box, click your primary hard disk, and then click Find Now 4.Right-click the Folders.dbx file and then click Rename 5.Type folders.old, and then click OK 6.Start Outlook Express, The Folders.dbx will be created automatically

If you are unable to restore deleted e-mails, then it is recommended that you opt for a third-party deleted email recovery application immediately.

Stellar Phoenix Deleted Email Recovery is a reliable and versatile tool which recovers permanently deleted e-mails from both Microsoft Outlook PST and Outlook Express DBX files. This deleted mail recovery application is compatible with MS Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, 2000 and Outlook Express 5.x, 6.x versions.