HELP!!!

[woodelf]

In Outlook Express, when I delete a message it usually says 'do you want to permanently delete this message' but now for some reason, this message has changed to these messages...which I didn't realise and now my in box is totally empty, but is there any way of retreiving all those seemingly deleted messages? Please help me if you can!

[Old_Geezer]

I'm no expert in Outlook Express, but I suspect you clicked in a different place to usual to get the different confirmation message.

If the deleted messages are not in a 'deleted items' folder in your Outlook Express then the chances don't seem too good. In your shoes I'd avoid writing anything more to the hard drive in case there is a deleted file you can recover, but which is lost if it gets overwritten.

There is file recovery software 'out there', but best wait to see if anyone on this site knows more first.

[woodelf]

Many Thanks OG, but it seems all is lost. When I logged on this morning, the mail program was a bit 'unstable', probably due to hard drive being hammered by update installations and where I thought I had keystroked one thing, I must have done summat else and highlighted the whole in-box and my delete or rather a hard delete, just wiped it out and I couldn't even recover owt from my isp webmail. So all is gone, until ask a few bods if they've still got stuff in their sent items. It'll teach me to make back ups too!

[wildwood]

If you haven't emptied your deleted items box, the mail will still be in there. Simply click the Deleted Items box and when it opens drag the ones you want to the Inbox folder.

If you want to delete one item from any box make sure you click on it so it changes to the dark shadow, not the light shadow that it changed to when you click in the actual mail of the selected message. To select more than one message hold down the Ctrl key while you click on others. To delete whole whole lot in a row such as a whole folder, click on the top one and then while holding down the Shift key, click on the bottom one, and the whole lot inbetween will be selected.

[woodelf]

Sorry for the delay in replying wildwood, but it seems I did a permanent delete and all that was there has been wiped clean. However, I am able to retreive the important lost mails, because someone with more sense than me...not hard to dind...smile...had archived the mails to me and is able to forward them on to me. A hard lesson to learn, but I've now learnt it and will only just delete as normal and then at least I can retreive from the 'waste bin' if necessary.