From my research this really is not possible. What you could do though is make a back up copy of all your dbx files to a safe place and then let it compress. If it messes up your email then you have the back up. If it doesn’t then you should be fine!

I’ve been reading your comments on Outlook Express and losing emails in the inbox after saying OK to OE compressing it. So essentially, once I said yes and let OE do its magic and then noticed six months of my emails are gone – they are pretty much gone? I did the compression on the June 14th and now there is a loss of all my emails from Dec 11th to the 14th in my inbox. Sent is okay as are my folders I created for specific emails, it is just my inbox. I found the dbx files for all the folders and yes, the inbox is very large over 800 meg. I imagine it was huge before the 14th and the file essentially lopped off the data. I’ll back them all up now that I know where they are. Let me know your thoughts on the lost email due the compression if you have a chance.

Thank you

Thanks

You make a good point. It is always important to back up any file that you are trying to recover. This is even more true when it comes to database files, that are inherently fragile. Outlook Express uses a dbx file extension which is a database. The new free email program in Windows Vista, Windows Mail, is a lot more complex to recover from. I recommend that everyone exports their Windows Mail file on a regular basis. You can also copy the directory which is similar to the location of Outlook Express files:
To Backup your messages, you need to use the Export option. To Restore your messages that you have already backed up, you will have to use the Import option. This will save a copy of your messages to a empty folder outside of Windows Mail that you can use for a backup. Windows Mail email messages have the .eml file extension. You will also see custom folders you have created in there as well.
The default folder location where Windows Mail store the messages at is:
NOTE: You will need to have Show hidden files and folders checked in Folder Options. For how, see: How to Hide or Show Hidden Files and Folders in Vista

C:\users\(your user name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Local Folders

C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Identities\ contains each of your OE identities – one per subdirectory. You can also use the “Export” option under the File menu but it’s usually not worth it in this type of case; I just copy the entire identity at once instead for safety and convenience. Otherwise you have to delete all the duplicates when you import the backup. There’s actually utilities that do nothing but cleanup dupes in email programs because it’s so hard to do by hand! Using the directory method allows you to get around this issue by renaming the corrupted identity and copying back the backup. An added advantage is that it makes it simple to burn it to a CD later. One gotcha: You must not have OE loaded when doing this folder copy. You’ll see all kinds of access denied errors.

BTW: Does anyone have any more tips on finding the exact name of the folder in OE’s menus? Or is there a utility that does to the entire identity and not just the messages? That would help lots of people who wouldn’t even know how to get to Windows Explorer, yet alone mess with some deeply buried folder.

In OE 6, I found this easy one: Just right click on the Inbox folder and select the ‘properties’ option. It says exactly where the current selected identity is stored. In my case it says C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{3C…}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Inbox.dbx That means that I’d want to backup the folder starting with the { symbol inside the Identities folder. Note that this is not the “Inbox” of your Hotmail/Gmail/etc. account but the one near the top where it says “local folders” to the left.

If you already did the compression and you had too many files in one folder, then you’ll have to use a tool that tries to extract as many messages as possible. You’ll still want to make a backup after the corruption in case OE decides to ‘help you’ by overwriting the ‘useless’ message data. Opening OE and especially downloading new emails after this happens=Bad

Here is a link to the Outlook Express Data Recovery Software download the demo and see if it can help.