Frequently Asked Questions

Advanced Outlook Express Repair(AOER) is a powerful tool to recover emails from corrupt dbx files and mbx files where Outlook Express stores emails and folders. It can scan the dbx and mbx files and recover mails in them as much as possible, so to minimize the loss in file corruption.

Advanced Outlook Express Repair supports to repair Microsoft Outlook Express 4.x mbx files and Outlook Express 5.x/6 dbx files.

dbt files are simply the temporary version of dbx files. If your Outlook Express crashes and you cannot find a wanted dbx file or recover a wanted message from the dbx file, then please try to find dbt files on your local hard disk, rename their extensions to .dbx and then repair them with Advanced Outlook Express Repair.

Outlook Express 4.x uses two file types, MBX and IDX, to store your messages on your machine. For instance, you would find an inbox.mbx and outbox.mbx on your system where your e-mail messages exist, along with corresponding IDX files. Should you create additional folders to better organize your mail, Outlook Express will actually create two files, "folderX.mbx" and "folderX.idx." The first file is where the actual messages will be stored; the latter contains indexing information for all the messages that will be stored in the new folder. The "X" is an ordinal number, which corresponds to the folder creation order -- for example, our first folder created would be folder1.mbx, then folder2.mbx and so on; each with its corresponding IDX file.

Normally, these files are kept in the installation directory; for users of Windows NT:
C:\Winnt\Profiles\"user name"\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Mail

and for users of Windows 95 or Windows 98:
C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\"username"\mail

Note: If the file isn't in that location, it may have been installed in another area. In that case, you can use the "Search" function in Windows to find the .mbx files, as follows:
1. Click "Start" menu
2. Click "Search" menu item and then "For Files and Folders"
3. Input *.mbx as the search criterion.
4. Click "Search Now" to find all .mbx files on your local disk.
5. In "Search Results", repair the corresponding .mbx files with Advanced Outlook Express Repair.

Please do as follows:
1. Use the "Search" function in Windows to find all the dbx files or mbx files on your local driver.
2. Repair all these dbx files or mbx files with the "Batch Repair" function in Advanced Outlook Express Repair(AOER). AOER will output the recovered messages in a corresponding "xxxx_recovered" directory for each repaired dbx file called 'xxxx'.
3. Backup the dbx files or mbx files and delete the original files.
4. Start Outlook Express.
5. Import the recovered eml files into Outlook Express.

Please just use the demo version to repair your file normally in the "Repair" page. If it can be repaired successfully, you will see a messagebox after the reparation, where you can click the "Show Reparation Report" button and see the detailed reports of all the recoverable messages. In addition, the demo version will output 10 recovered messages to the destination directory. As for the remaining messages, a prefix "(Demo)" will be added to their names and their contents will be replaced with demo information.

According to these information, you can know whether AOER works on your file and order the full version to get the contents of all the recoverable messages.

Please click here for detailed instructions on how to import recovered emails into an Outlook Express mail folder.

Contact our technical support: support@datanumen.com. If possible, please also save the repair log into a file(make sure the "Include System Information" option in the save file dialog is selected) and attach it in your e-mail.

The current version of Advanced Outlook Express Repair can only work under PC/Windows platforms. However, you can still use it to recover Outlook Express emails on Macintosh computers, as follows:
1. Copy the Outlook Express dbx or mbx file from your Macintosh computer to a PC computer.
2. On your PC computer, install Advanced Outlook Express Repair and use it to recover emails from the dbx or mbx file. All the recovered emails will be outputted as separate .eml files.
3. Copy the recovered .eml files back to your Macintosh computer and import them into your Outlook Express.

The demo version will report all the recoverable messages in the dbx or mbx files and output 10 recovered messages, with the remaining messages filled with demo information. To get the remaining messages, you need to order the full version. The price for the personal and business license are $49.95 and $79.95, respectively.

Please click here to order now or get more ordering and payment information. We accept Credit Card, Solo/Switch/Maestro, Bank/Wire Transfer, PayPal, Check, Cash and Fax/Phone Orders.

If your company or institution is interested in licensing AOER for several users, you can save a lot of money by purchasing a volume license.

With the personal license, you can use the program for non-commercial purposes in non-business, non commercial environments.

With the business license, you can use the program in a corporate, government or business environments.

In general, you can download the full version of AOER immediately after sending the online order form.

If you do not get your full version... or if you've lost it (Hey, it happens! :) ... please email us at sales@datanumen.com. Please include your name, address, email address, and order confirmation number (if you have it). We will be happy to help you.

Outlook Express has a Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus option at Tools | Options | Security . If this option is enabled, Outlook Express will disallow you to access any attachment that may potentially be a virus, for example, a file with an .exe or .scr extension. You can just turn off this option to access your attachments.

Please see the article Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6 in Microsoft Knowledge Base for more detailed information.