Recently I experienced an issue with Office 2007 and sought the assistance of Microsoft Technical Support. In order to resolve the problem I needed to install the Technical Support Assistant on my computer, allowing the Microsoft technician to remotely control the computer. This all went well and the problem was found and fixed. The technician then asked me to remove the Technical Support Assistant software to secure the privacy of my computer. During this process the Outlook Express installation on my computer was upgraded from Outlook Express XP to Outlook Express 6. As a result, I lost all my valuable emails. I was assured by a computer expert in Canberra that they are not lost but can be recovered. Could you provide step-by-step instructions on how to recover these lost emails? The computer is running Windows XP.

I am not exactly sure what happened on your computer as there is no such version of Outlook Express called Outlook Express XP. In fact, Windows XP comes with Outlook Express 6 installed by default, which is the version to which you thought Outlook Express had been upgraded on your computer. That said, the end result at the moment is that all email appears to be missing so this needs to be resolved. Even if Outlook Express had been updated there is no reason that you should be missing email, as this should have been seamlessly moved across to the new upgraded installation of Outlook Express. Therefore, my first suspicion is that a different email client has been installed on your computer, while the original email client has also remained. As the problem which you were working with Microsoft Technical Support towards resolving was related to Office 2007 I am wondering whether you are now opening Outlook 2007 rather than Outlook Express and thinking that all your email has disappeared. This is entirely likely as, if Microsoft Technical Support made the Office 2007 applications the default for operations on the computer, then this would have also made Outlook 2007 the default email client. Even though Outlook and Outlook Express have similar names they are completely separate programs, so if you are now opening Outlook instead of Outlook Express it would be easy to think that Outlook Express has been upgraded and all your email is lost, when in fact they are actually two different programs.

To test this theory we will manually attempt to open Outlook Express via a command. This will definitely open Outlook Express (bypassing any problems with shortcuts in the Start Menu which may be pointing to Outlook rather than Outlook Express). Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msimn” (without the quotes) and then click OK. This will start Outlook Express. If you receive a message upon startup saying that Outlook Express is not your default email client and asking whether you would like to make it the default, then click Yes and tick the box to not show that message again. Once Outlook Express has opened, check whether your email is intact and present within Outlook Express. If so, then the problem seems to simply be a case of being mistaken between two different programs. As we have also re-established Outlook Express as the default email client this problem should no longer occur, as whenever you wish to send an email or click the Email shortcut in the Start menu then Outlook Express should open by default, as opposed to the other email client that you were previously opening by mistake.

However, if you find that even after manually opening Outlook Express that all your email is missing then there is a more significant problem as it seems that you are actually opening Outlook Express but the email has disappeared. In this case the process of retrieving your email will be more involved. This will be quite a difficult issue to resolve via correspondence, since it often requires a degree of searching around for the missing email which is difficult to do without sitting in front of the computer. Therefore, we will go to the most common place where the email could be located in an attempt to retrieve the messages which is the default mail store location in Windows. Your Outlook Express email is actually stored in a mail store folder. If, for some reason, Outlook Express has lost touch with that email store folder then all your email is still located in that folder, but Outlook Express has lost the link across to the folder. To check whether your email is in the mail store folder, open either My Computer or Windows Explorer. We need to enable the display of hidden files and folders, since the mail store folder is a hidden folder. Go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options”. In the Folder Options window that appears, click the “View” tab and select “Show hidden files and folders”. You should also untick “Hide file extensions for known file types”. Click OK to save the settings and close the window.

Once the display of hidden files and folders have been enabled, navigate to the following location: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{ABCD1234…}\Microsoft\Outlook Express. Within this folder you should see a number of files, each representing a folder within Outlook Express. You will be able to tell whether this is your email because there will likely be files representing custom folders which you have created and also each file should be fairly large, since email has been stored within the files. Be aware, if the only files that are listed are the default Outlook Express folders (i.e. Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Drafts, etc) and each folder is relatively small, it is likely that these are just the default files and not actually your email.

However, let’s work on the assumption that your email is actually located in the mail store folder. Before doing anything else, make a copy of the entire folder as a backup (just in case something goes horribly wrong). Once the backup has been made, make sure that any instances of Outlook Express have been closed. Then, delete the “Folders.dbx” file. This is the folders index file and does not contain any email data – just an index of all Outlook Express folders. If this file becomes corrupt then Outlook Express may not be able to open the folders containing your email. Once the file has been deleted, reopen Outlook Express and check whether you are able to see the email.

If the email still does not appear then it seems that Outlook Express is pointing to the incorrect mail store location. To determine the active mail store location for Outlook Express, go to the “Tools” menu > “Options”. In the Options window that appears, click the “Maintenance” tab and the “Store Folder” button. A small message window should appear showing the location of the mail store folder. Right-click on the location and select “Select All” then right-click again and select “Copy”. This will copy the location of the mail store folder. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and then paste the location into the run box and click OK. This should open the active mail store folder.

Once the active mail store folder is open, close Outlook Express. In the active mail store folder you should see a file representing each of the folders in Outlook Express. Move all of these files to a different location, as they are not needed. Once this has been done (and the active mail store folder is empty) copy all of the files from the other mail store folder that contains your email into the active folder. What you are doing is copying all of your email store files from the defunct mail store folder into the active mail store folder. Once this has been done, re-open Outlook Express and all your email should be present.

These instructions only covered one possible scenario for fixing this problem, and assumes that your email was relatively easy to find. If you are still not able to locate your email then you will likely need to take your computer to a technician for a resolution, since it will be too difficult to resolve this problem via correspondence.