FoXtract

Foxtract is a simple and open source Outlook Express e-mail message extractor that works with corrupted data files.

Sometimes Outlook Express has the bad habit of corrupting some of its data files. A typical situation is when it re-compacts its data file or when the size exceeds 2 Gb. Some recovery tools try to rebuild or read from the tree structure that Outlook Express uses internally. This can sometimes be quite difficult if the tree is very damaged.

Foxtract takes a different approach: it will scan the whole data file to find all message segments, which it will use to determine the head segment of a message. A single mail can be composed of several segments - every segment takes up to 512 bytes, so for instance a 3 Mb message will be composed of 6144 segments.

Once the head segment is found, there is a good chance that the message can be retrieved.

Please be aware that this tool will only read the messages from Outlook Express data files (files with the .dbx extension). It will not read or recover messages from Office's Outlook, which are stored in a .pst file -- this is because although they share a common name, both programs are very different and don't use the same data format.

Give FoXtract a try to see just how useful it can be for you!