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Thread ID: 23879	2002-08-28 08:14:00	Outlook Express	bruciebear (1478)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
74508	2002-08-28 08:14:00	In Outlook Express under Options, Maintenance, there is a button that says Click Clean Up Now to clean up downloaded messages. Can someone tell me exactly what this does? That brings up another general question someone told me every thing you ever have done on Outlook Express is memorised on your hard drive, is this true? If so how do you remove these from the hard drive, cheers.	bruciebear (1478)
74509	2002-08-28 08:17:00	If you don't delete messages after you have read them, then they will build up. I have almost every message received since about 1996. They build up, believe me. This is just a tool to delete all messages over a certain age. But don't do it if there are some you want to hang on to. robo.	robo (205)
74510	2002-08-28 10:55:00	I think the "Click Clean Up Now to clean up downloaded messages" is for the News messages in Outlook Express. You can subscribe to newsgroups and this feature tidies your messages up after you've finished reading them. Yes, it is true that all your messages in OE are saved in a folder on your hard drive, even if you have "deleted" them. The following is from a guy called "The Riddler": * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 7.0. A LOOK AT OUTLOOK EXPRESS Would you think twice about what you said if you knew it was being recorded? E-mail correspondence leaves a permanent record of everything you've said -- even after you've told Outlook Express to erase it. You are given a false sense of security sense you've erased it twice, so surely it must be gone. The first time Outlook simply moves it to your "Deleted Items" folder. The second time you erase it Outlook simply "pretends" it is gone. The truth is your messages are still being retained in the database files on your HD. (As with your e-mail attachments.) For earlier versions of Outlook Express, they will be located in either of the following folder: c:\program files\internet mail and news\%user%\mail\*.mbx c:\windows\application data\microsoft\outlook\mail\*.mbx At this point you have two choices. a) Get in the habit of compacting your folders all the time. b) Backup, print-out, or import the data into another e-mail client such as Eudora and then delete the mbx files (and thus all your e-mail correspondence) by typing this: cd\progra~1\intern~1\%user%\mail deltree/y mail or cd\windows\applic~1\micros~1\outloo~1\ deltree/y mail *Typing in the above commands will kill all your e-mail correspondence. Do not follow those steps in less you have already exported your e-mail and address book! If you have a newer version of Outlook or Outlook Express the databases are located elsewhere. Look for .dbx and .pst file extensions. These databases are five times as creepy, and I strongly recommend you take at the files. Just from my outbox.dbx file I was able to view some of my old browsing history, bring up previously-visited websites in html format, and even read ancient e-mail from my Eudora client (read: EUDORA). Again, don't take my word for it. See for yourself and THEN tell me what you think Slick Willy is up to here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The entire very interesting report can be found here: www.****microsoft.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml (www.****microsoft.com) Note: this link will probably be "scrubbed" by the forum's expletive remover so you will have to replace the asterisks with the missing letters yourself. They are f-u-c-k without the hyphens in there. Sorry, but it's true.	Susan B (19)
74511	2002-08-28 22:02:00	Susan, I thought you were a nice girl! Did you go to the site by accident, perhaps? robo.	robo (205)
74512	2002-08-29 02:19:00	As if we needed to be told what "****" stood for in referance to M$!	Chris Wilson (431)
74513	2002-08-29 02:26:00	Keep thinking it robo, I am a nice girl!! Just ask my kids...	Susan B (19)
74514	2002-08-29 10:11:00	You are a nice girl Susan. Those letters mean: For Updating Clients Knowledge don't they? I have a query re Outlook Express (version 5.0 Win98). When I checked my history files for old e-mails using the (2nd) address you listed, they all showed as Word files with an extension of .dbx not .mbx. I find that they are not readable in word though. Should they be? They show as lots of odd characters plus lots of small squares. I tried changing a couple to .txt, and then to .mbx and tried Notepad, Wordpad and Word 97 but nothing was readable. Also tried Irfanview which said unknown format. I then changed them back to the original. The path to my files was slightly different to what you listed. Mine was C/windows/application data/*Identities*followed by a long string of characters/Microsoft/outlook express/then all the e-mail files. All of the files had a .dbx extension and were preceded by a Word icon. As it is more curiosity than anything else, don't waste your valuable time on a full explanation if the answer is not a simple one. Thanks.	exLL (515)
74515	2002-08-29 10:38:00	:8} Why, thank you exLL, that's really kind of you! Regarding your query, the .dbx files are your email folders as well and can't be viewed in word, wordpad or notepad as you have found out. They shouldn't be associated with Word (with the Word icon attached to them) but that doesn't really matter as it just means Word will try to open them if you double click on them. You can extract the emails from them with a .dbx extractor if you ever need to. This (pages.prodigy.net) page explains it a bit and has a link to a free .dbx extractor and some shareware ones as well. A point to remember is that each .dbx folder contains ALL the emails in that folder and you can't extract just one email from that folder, the whole lot will be extracted at once. Once they have all been extracted you can delete the ones you don't want, though. The dbx extractor programs are mainly used to backup your emails and restore them if you lose the originals, so it might be quite a handy program to have, although I haven't actually used it myself. Hopefully that has made some sense. I'm not an expert on all this myself, it's just what I have read and I still can't understand why there are .dbx files and .mbx files. I just know they belong to Outlook and/or Outlook Express.	Susan B (19)
74516	2002-08-29 10:58:00	As usual, a clear precise answer to a question. Thanks a lot Susan. :-) I really did not mean to put you to that much trouble, however I now understand it much better and will save your answer to my F1 postings file after studying it at length later. Cheers. LL :-)	exLL (515)
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