And today, I'm referring to computers, not husbands. Opened the main email this morning (Outlook Express) to find that everything, including thousands of old, saved messages, that had been in my inbox and the subfolders thereof, had mysteriously vanished. After some exploration and frustration, we eventually decided that what had happened was that the compacted backup files had corrupted, which could happen either if the computer crashed while Express was compacting (maybe) or if the compaction process was cancelled partway through (more likely, we think, although we did have a crash yesterday, but the email was still there afterwards, we are pretty sure). Not to name any names or anything, but some of us are more patient than others of us, so...
Luckily, I managed to find all the old compacted backup files and download a piece of freeware that extracts the messages from them, back into email format. The downside is that you don't seem to be able to then move the messages en-masse back to your email, but only one message at a time - fine if you have 20, not so good if there are years' worth. But at least I know where the stuff is and can get at it, to dig out the stuff I need (photos from friends, usernames and account numbers for online businesses, and so on). I did need to clear out old folders anyway, but this is sort of an extreme way to go about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment