Mac Forum / Applications / Outlook Express / November 2003

This seems like a really great board.  I've spent the last few hours
here doing various searches on my specific problem, so I feel I've
done my homework somewhat before posting, but before I do anything
drastic, I want to be really clear about the order of the
troubleshooting steps to take...Heres the line up: Mac 8500, G3, Boots
from 40 Gig hard drive (Original 1 Gig still in machine), OS 9.1, 512
RAM, Outlook Express 5.0.6; Scenerio: Husband launches OE this morning
and downloads email, per usual...everything working fine.  We decide
to hook up an old scanner (circa 1998) and install software.  That
works fine.  Husband opens OE once again in afternoon to download
email.  All  emails from the last nine months GONE, including those in
inbox, sent, drafts.  The most recent date in any folder is Feb 2,
2002.  (We have emails going back to 1999.)  The most bizarre part of
this is that the Delete folder contains emails for that day as well;
emails which have long since been deleted, as we have the delete on
quit option chosen.    Questions you may ask: Backup?  Our most recent
backup (groan) was over a year ago of course. (Yes, I KNOW better,
but...) Have we ever "compacted" the database? No.  What have I tried?
First, I thought we might have booted from the old hard drive somehow
and OE was reading an old identity from there.  Restarted with new
hard drive as start up disk just to be sure.  Open OE, most recent
date still 2/4/02.  MUD folder shows identity in question last
modified when my husband opened it in afternoon and the folder is huge
almost 300 MB.  I try switching identities (we have two others which
are old and we don't use) still nothing.  I  save the the current
identity to our maxtor and transfer it to my computer (imac g4) under
new identity...still shows last emails sent or recieved 2/3/02.  I ran
Norton UnErase and found nothing.  After reading all the posts here,
it seems the database got corrupted somehow, perhaps with an
extensions conflict with the scanner install???  At any rate, is my
best course of action now to make sure I have a back up of the MUD (as
it exists at the moment) and then do a rebuild of the database?  If
so, specific steps on that would be fabulous.  What I have learned so
far?  BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP.  (It helps to know we're not the only
ones out there undergoing this sort of trama.)  Thanks for reading
this...any help is greatly appreciated.  Most Kindly, ---Susan