Today, i got a ticket from user about her computer always get the message, “To free up disk space outlook express can compact messages” when her computer start-up. According to her, she not even use Outlook Express.  She is Thunderbird user.

• then click the Modify button.

• Uncheck the checkbox before: Microsoft Outlook Express.

• Click OK, and then click Close to save the settings.

If this problem persists, you can try to reset the compact count to 0 inside the system registry. To do that,  just follow below steps:

• Start the registry editor by click Start -> Run and type regedit
• Open following registry key :-

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{identity}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0

Note: identity is a string of letters, numbers, and dashes.

• Right click on compact Check count, and select Modify

• change value data to 0
• Click OK
• Close the registry editor and restart your machine.

If you have other solution to solve this problem, please do not hesitate to share with via leaving your comment here.

When you try to send and receive e-mail on Microsoft Outlook, you may receive following error message:

These error messages may occur if Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express cannot establish a connection with your e-mail server. These error messages are frequently caused by one of the following:

1. Wrong configuration of email client
2. Your ISP blocks port 25
3. DNS problem at your ISP

When you facing above problem, you can try to check your email client setting or disable your firewall setting to solve this problem. In my case, I just allow POP3 with SSL and change the pop3 port no 25 to 995. After change, my Microsoft Outlook work fine.

If you facing the same problem and have others solution, please leave your comment and share with me.

Recently i always get a complain from my user regarding their email attachment problem. They received an email-message from customer with a file, named winmail.dat, as attachment. They fail to open that attachment file using Thunderbird mail client. But for those Microsoft Outlook user, they able to see and open the attachment file.

It is because Microsoft Outlook e-mail program sometimes sends e-mails in the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF). Most other e-mail programs, including Thunderbird, do not understand TNEF and will the e-mail attachment as “winmail.dat”

To Read, view, open winmail.dat email attachments, you have to convert it. There is a free application on Mac OS X platform called TNEF’s Enough that can open winmail.dat files and extract the attachment

Below are the link to download TNEF’s Enough

• If you use Mac OS X 10.5 and above, just click HERE to download

• If you use older Mac OS X version, click HERE to download

To extract winmail.dat, just follow below steps:-

• Save the attachment on your computer.
• Launch TNEF’s Enough application
  
• Click on the ‘File ->Open’ from the TNEF’s Enough Menu and select the winmail.dat
• After that, you will see the content of the .dat attachment

• Just click Save button to save the content of .dat attachment to the location that you prefer.

If you have another tips to solve this problem, please leave your comments here.

When you try to send an e-mail message, the e-mail message may move to your Outbox and not be sent.  Why? How to solve this problem?

This behavior can be caused by any of the following conditions:

• You open the e-mail message in your Outbox before the e-mail message is sent.
• You work offline and have not made a remote connection.
• Your sending options are not set to send e-mail messages immediately by using the correct connection.
• Your mail folders or e-mail messages within the folders are damaged.

Solution 1 – Change Working Offline

Just to change the Work Offline command:

• On the File menu, click Work Offline. Besides, you also need to make sure your computer is connected to internet
• try to send your email

Solution 2 – Check your Send Options

• On the Tools menu, click Options.
• On the Send tab, click to select both the Send messages immediately and Save copy of sent messages in the ‘Sent Items’ folder check boxes.
• On the Connection tab, click Change under Internet Connection Settings, and then make sure that the correct dial-up or local area network (LAN) settings are in the list.
• Click OK, click OK, open the message in your Outbox, and then click Send.

Solution 3 – Create New Outbox

Your Outbox folders may be damaged. To solve this problem, you need to create a new Outbox folder.

Just use the following steps:

• Find the location of Outlook Express store folder (Tools-> Options -> Maintenance” tab > Click “Store Folder”) and copy the location
• Exit Outlook Express.
• Paste the Outlook Express folder location in the “Start” > “Run”
• Delete Outbox.dbx
• Restart Outlook Express. A new empty outbox folder is created automatically.

When you try to receive your email from outlook express, an error message “An unknown error has occurred. Account: ‘Example’, Server: ‘example.mail.domain.com’, Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure (SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800C0133 ” display on screen. What wrong with the outlook express?

Besides, your outlook express also will have the following symptoms :

All the mail disappear
Unable to download emails
E-mail message could not be sent.

Before i do any research on this problem, i also did some troubleshooting on outlook express like check the pop3 & smtp port, internet connection problem and etc. All the configuration and connection seems ok. So, what wrong with the outlook express?

After i did some research and troubleshooting, these error occur because of the corrupted Inbox or .dbx file.

The main reason cause inbox or .dbx file corrupted is too many email on inbox or specify folder. According to Microsoft, the maximum file size of the .dbx files that are used by Outlook Express is 2 gigabytes (GB).

In this case, my inbox has been corrupted. I try to access to outlook express store folder and check my indox.dbx file size. The file size more than 2GB.

To resolve this problem, there are 3 possible solution:

1st Solution elete some of your emails

2nd Solution: Create a new folder or new inbox to move some of your emails to the new folder you have created.

How to do that, follow the steps:

• Create the new folder inside Outlook Express called oldinbox, just move all the inbox email to this new folder called oldInbox
• Find the location of Outlook Express store folder (Tools-> Options -> Maintenance” tab > Click “Store Folder”)
• You may copy the location and paste it in the “Start” > “Run”
• Click OK to access to store folder
• After that, just delete the “inbox.dbx” and Restart the Outlook Express, This creates a new inbox.dbx file automatically.

If you follow the steps, your Outlook Express should be back to normal.

Why I could not set my Caps Lock off while I am typing in Outlook Express? How to overcome?

This is because you’ve accidentally pressed ‘Shift’ key more than 5 times then ‘Shift’ + ‘Ctrl’ + ‘Alt’ keys. So, all the capitals that you’ve typed will be in big capital even thought you have pressed ‘Caps Lock’.

To overcome this problem, press again 5 times of ‘Shift’ key.
Then, you will see ‘StickyKeys’ message prompt out.
Press ‘Shift’ + ‘Ctrl’ + ‘Alt’ key for 2 to3 seconds and release. Press ‘OK’ to close the Windows Message and try to type again.

On previous post i had showed all of you how to backup your Outlook Express Address Book. In this tutorial, i will show your how to import your Address Book from your backup.

To import your Outlook Express Address Book:

1. Launch your Outlook Express program
2. On the File menu, click Import, and then click Other Address Book
3. Click Text File (Comma Separated Values), and then click Import.
4. Click Browse
5. Locate the Mail Backup folder in your backup location, click the address book backup.csv file, and t hen click Open
6. Click Next, and then click Finish.
7. Click OK, and then click Close

As per my earlier post, i had teach your how to backup email messages. Here i will show your how to restore or import messages.

Here are the steps to import your Outlook Express email messages:

1. Launch your Outlook Express program
2. On the File menu, point to Import and click on Messages
3. In the Select an e-mail program to import from box, click Microsoft Outlook Express 5 or Microsoft Outlook Express 6, and then click Next
4. Click Import mail from an OE5 store directory or Import mail from an OE6 store directory, and then click OK.
5. Click Browse and click on the mail backup folder in your backup directory.
6. Click OK and Click Next
7. Click All Folders, click Next, and then click Finish.

Here are the steps to recover:

• Make sure Outlook Express is not running.
• Open the Recycle Bin on your Windows Desktop.
• Locate the “.bak” files corresponding to the Outlook Express folders you want to recover.
• Note: The “.bak” file will be named like the folder in Outlook Express.
• To restore a folder called “Archive”, look for “Archive.bak”, for example.
• Click on the “.bak” file with the right mouse button.
• Select Restore from the menu.
• Open your Outlook Express store folder in Windows Explorer.

* Drag and drop the “.dbx” file corresponding to the Outlook Express folder you want to recover to your Desktop.
* In the Outlook Express store folder, click on the “.bak” file to be recovered with the right mouse button.
* Select Rename from the menu.
* Change the “.bak” file extension to “.dbx”.
o If the file was called “Archive.bak”, for example, make sure it is named “Archive.dbx” now.
* Open Outlook Express.
* If your emails have been recovered, delete the “.dbx” file you moved to the Desktop.

Even if you had not yet installed the patch, message recovery could be easy:

* Exit Outlook Express.
* Look in your Windows Recycle Bin for a .dbx file corresponding to the folder from which mail is missing.
* Restore the .dbx file.
* Start Outlook Express.

On Outlook Express itself does not have any export Mail Rules function to allow us backup Mail Rules. Can we backup the Mail Rules? The answer is yes.

Here i will show your how to backup Outlook Express Mail Rules:

- Click Start button, and then click Run

- In the

Open box, type regedit, and then click OK

- Locate and click the following registry subkeys:

HKEY_CURREN

T_USER\Identities\{Identity Number}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules\Mail

- On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File

- In the Save In box, change the location to your desktop.

- In the File Nam

e box, type mailrules.reg, and click Save

- Exit from the Registry menu.

Your mail rules backup process is done…:-)