I’ve just received an email from a reader who has lost all their messages!  Ouch.  Outlook Express asked to compact messages upon exiting and subsequently deleted them all in the process.  To be honest, this has never happened to me, so I Googled the issue.  Here’s what I found:

• Apparently this can happen if the compacting process gets interrupted, or the files being compacted are corrupt – Outlook Express will start deleting them!

• It may be possible to restore these messages.  You’ll need to go looking in your recycle bin and restore the file from there. (See link article below for more information on how to do this).

• There is a patch that you can download from Microsoft that will ensure that if Outlook Express ever needs to start deleting messages (as it did in our reader’s case) that a backup of the deleted messages will be made.

I found a very comprehensive article on this subject here – Why You Should Let Outlook Express Compact Messages When It Asks You.  I highly recommend reading this and going through the steps suggested to restore your deleted messages.

In most cases, Outlook Express shouldn’t delete messages when it compacts them, but it’s important to let it finish.  That said, from research, it has happened to other people, so you can always say “no” or “cancel” when you are asked if you want to do this.