Outlook Express discovery

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jwax
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Outlook Express discovery

Post by jwax »

Found out the hard way what happens when your "Sent Items" folder reaches 2 GB in old sent stuff.
Until that folder is emptied, all outgoing mail gets bounced around between the Outbox and the Sent Items folders, causing multiple emails of the same thing being sent out.
One of my contacts got 72 of the same message on his Blackberry and begged me to stop!
So make sure you clean out the Sent Items folder occasionally!
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reloadron
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by reloadron »

jwax wrote:Found out the hard way what happens when your "Sent Items" folder reaches 2 GB in old sent stuff.
Until that folder is emptied, all outgoing mail gets bounced around between the Outbox and the Sent Items folders, causing multiple emails of the same thing being sent out.
One of my contacts got 72 of the same message on his Blackberry and begged me to stop!
So make sure you clean out the Sent Items folder occasionally!
Yeah, seen it happen a few times. Neighbor managed to do it. He actually had other neighbors and family who wanted to do really bad things to him. Since the items in the outbox can't move to the overflowing sent items they are resent every time outlook express does a send / receive. Bill, neighbors and Bill's family were very happy when I fixed his computer.

I can't immagine an outbox with 2 GB in it? :???:

On my home machines I don't even keep sent items.

Ron
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jwax
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Post by jwax »

Nice fix Ron!
I've had this PC for almost 3 years, and would get reminders that the Inbox was getting full, so created folders for them, but never got a warning that the Sent Items folder was bursting.
I thought I had a virus at first. It took a little searching to find that fix.
Next time I have a problem, I'll know who to ask! :grin:
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reloadron
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Post by reloadron »

This is a little late but actually what I did for Bill was went to his OE sentitem.dbx folder and just renamed it. I wasn't sure if he wanted to keep all that stuff. This is how to find the folders in OE:
Finding Your Store Folder
Here is a quick and easy way to display your Store Folder with just a few clicks and keystrokes.

1. In Outlook Express, click Options on the Tools menu.

2. Click the Maintenance tab.

3. Click the Store folder button.

4. Press the TAB key to highlight the Store Folder path.

5. Press CTRL+C to copy the path to the clipboard.

6. Click OK, then again OK to close the Options panel.

7. Click Start, and then click Run.

8. Press CTRL+V to paste the path into the command line.

9. Click OK.

10. If you do not see any files in the folder that opens, click Folder Options on the Tools menu, click the View tab, and then click "Show hidden files and folders" and click OK.
Taken from:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/com ... ption.mspx

Actually any of the folders can be deleted and the next time OE runs it will simply create a new folder. When I renamed the folder OE created a new one.

Ron
zlatan24
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by zlatan24 »

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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by zlatan24 »

jwax wrote:Found out the hard way what happens when your "Sent Items" folder reaches 2 GB in old sent stuff.
Until that folder is emptied, all outgoing mail gets bounced around between the Outbox and the Sent Items folders, causing multiple emails of the same thing being sent out.
One of my contacts got 72 of the same message on his Blackberry and begged me to stop!
So make sure you clean out the Sent Items folder occasionally!
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haklesup
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by haklesup »

Good to know. With about 15 years of email in my sent folder, I have only 1.2Gb. I guess I have a few years to go :)

I am getting an annoying problem on my home PC regarding OE. It keeps popping up the dialog that says It wants to compact the messages to save space. Whether I say no or yes and wait through the compacting process it keeps coming back with the same dialog. Sometimes every 5 minutes and drives me crazy. Sometimes letting it go through with it (click yes) I get a few days reprieve but it typically returns anyway. I even cleaned out several larger folders since I keep the main library on my work PC but that didn't help.

Does anybody know what causes this to trigger and if there is a way to turn this off?

I'll check the average and largest folder sizes when I get home today. There is probably a connection
reloadron
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by reloadron »

Does anybody know what causes this to trigger and if there is a way to turn this off?
This is interesting and what causes it is a registry setting. Generally by some magic default OE should look to compact messages every 100 times OE is opened. Note that "generally" and "default" are pretty generic. Keeping that in mind you could lookie at the registry. Working in XP click Start and choose Run. In the run dialog box type in regedit and hit enter.

That should open the registry editor. Now we begin a "drill down" clicking small plus signs to open and expand the registry keys.

Click the + sign to expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then expand Identies.

Under Identies you should see a long HEX number and that is you. Expand the HEX Number under Identies. Then expand Software and then expand Microsoft and then expand Outlook Express and then expand 5.0. Click to hilight 5.0 and in the right pane you will see all the OE settings. Note the number(s) beside Compact Check Count. You will see a HEX number like 0X00000 (something) and a decimal number in brackets. Example mine in my workstation are 0x0000056(86). I am guessing your number is very low.

Now if that is the case right click on Compact Check and you should get a small window to Modify among other choices. Choose Modify and for the base choose (check) Decimal. Mouse over the Value Data and change it to 100. That should set the count to 100.

Now before doing any of this I would suggest backing up the registry. There are ways to do this but let's backup the entire registry to be safe. When you first open the registry editor you should see My Computer at the very top. Click to hilight My Computer. Then click File and choose Export. Choose a place to save the backup file to. The desktop is convenient but wherever works for you just remember where you place it. Give it a name like MyBackupRegistry and click Save.

Let me know what you find.

Ron
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jwax
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by jwax »

Question for you Ron- Does all that email compressing do any good? Should it be done occasionally (count=100), or could you set it to count=10000?
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reloadron
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by reloadron »

jwax wrote:Question for you Ron- Does all that email compressing do any good? Should it be done occasionally (count=100), or could you set it to count=10000?
Actually it is looking to compact messages. So what is that actually all about?
What Does Compacting Messages Mean, and What Happens?
When you delete an email in Outlook Express, it is moved to the Deleted Items folder. The message disappears from its original folder, and when you empty the trash, it disappears from there, too.

In neither case is the message removed from the file on your disk immediately, however. Editing files for this is a slow process, and you'd have to wait or experience Outlook Express responding slowly whenever you deleted a couple of emails. This is why deletion merely hides the messages from view.

Of course, having all your deleted messages still on disk means a lot of space that can be reclaimed is wasted over time, and if Outlook Express has to keep track of too many obsolete messages this itself can mean a slowdown of certain actions.

So Outlook Express tries to remove these deleted emails physically from time to time. This it calls "compacting". Every 100 times you close Outlook Express, you are asked to start that process.

If This Process is So Essential, Why Doesn't Outlook Express Do It on Its Own, in the Background?
Compacting folders from time to time is essential. Even more essential is that the process can be completed without interruption, however.

If Outlook Express did the compacting in the background and automatically, you might notice a slowdown, sense a crash or for some other reason try to quit Outlook Express. Compacting, Outlook Express would refuse to shut down, of course. In your frustration, you might kill the process and your messages could become corrupted.
The above information in the quote was TAKEN FROM HERE

Yes, I believe it is a good thing to allow it to compact messages. At what point? I like the default of 100 but a users choice.

Ron
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jwax
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by jwax »

Thanks Ron! Appreciate the quote and the explanation! :cool:
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haklesup
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by haklesup »

Thanks, I'm quite familiar with regedit but I didn't know where the relevant key was. However, your interpretation of the key is a little off. The value is not the number to which it counts to, the key holds the actual value of the count.

For example, when I opened the key, My count was about what yours was (82) decimal. I closed and reopened outlook express and the hex value incremented by 2 and the decimel value incremented as well. I repeated this until the counter got all the way up to 100 decimal and then the next time I closed outlook, it asked to compact messages. I clicked cancel and noted the counter was continuing to count past 100. It continued to ask to compact messages as I continued to click cancel to the compact now dialog.

After I let it compact the messages, the counter finally reset to 0 and increment by 1 each time I loaded thereafter(theres something I am not understanding about the counter increment based on its current value). So the registry key is the counter and the limit must be hardcoded or held in another registry key I am unaware of.

As to the presistant requests to compact I was having. It finally stopped when I went to the location where the messages were stored and manually deleted a bunch of compacted files corrisponding to newsgroups I had deleted in the program over a year ago. For some reason they were remaining in the library even though the folders were gone. I think what was happening was compact would fail and the counter would not reset as a result. it would sometimes ask when I wasn't even running outlook express. it would just pop up the dialog at random times while I was sitting across the room. Sometimes it would even play the chime tone it does when it pops up the dialog without displaying that dialog. A few times the chime would sound continuously until I had to reboot.

As a final terst. I set the count to a high value 450 and waited. Within a few minutes the dialog popped up, chimed and began to pester me to compact messages again. Case closed
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Re: Outlook Express discovery

Post by reloadron »

Thank You haklesup as my thoughts on how it worked were way off base. I only have my old workstation running Outlook Express and was messing with that. However, I never use that system to do any email operations. I incorrectly assumed (ass-u-me) thet the number was not incremented but a fixed value. Yes, the actual number is likely hard coded in there somewhere.

Interesting how you fixed the initial problem. Useful information there and again thank you for pointing out the error of my thinking and post.

Ron
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Re:

Post by zlatan24 »

reloadron wrote:This is a little late but actually what I did for Bill was went to his OE sentitem.dbx folder and just renamed it. I wasn't sure if he wanted to keep all that stuff. This is how to find the folders in OE:
Finding Your Store Folder
Here is a quick and easy way to display your Store Folder with just a few clicks and keystrokes.

1. In Outlook Express, click Options on the Tools menu.

2. Click the Maintenance tab.

3. Click the Store folder button.

4. Press the TAB key to highlight the Store Folder path.

5. Press CTRL+C to copy the path to the clipboard.

6. Click OK, then again OK to close the Options panel.

7. Click Start, and then click Run.

8. Press CTRL+V to paste the path into the command line.

9. Click OK.

10. If you do not see any files in the folder that opens, click Folder Options on the Tools menu, click the View tab, and then click "Show hidden files and folders" and click OK.
Taken from:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/com ... ption.mspx

Actually any of the folders can be deleted and the next time OE runs it will simply create a new folder. When I renamed the folder OE created a new one.

Ron
There are a lot of tools,which works with other types of files. But yesterday no one of its couldn't help me. Some of my emails were lost. And luckily I called my friend up and he told me a lot of interesting things. He advised me the next software - recovering outlook express emails. It resolved my trouble for a minute and without payment as far as I remembered. Moreover I knew how the utility worked with very large files of dbx format and process them in a batch mode.
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