Outlook Express is not a completely reliable database program and can have problems with its mail folders, the *.dbx files. For this reason alone, you should always maintain a backup of your important emails. This will prevent you from data loss consequences that might occur due to mail folders' corruption. However, if backup fails to restore, you will need a DBX Recovery solution to repair the corrupted files.

For example, you might come across issues when you start receiving new email messages in Drafts folder instead of default Inbox folder. All other email operations work well, except that the emails are delivered to OE Drafts.dbx file.

Cause

The basic reason for such issues can be any of the following:

1. You have configured Outlook Express to use a rule that directs all the incoming email messages to go to Drafts folder.

2. Folders.dbx file is corrupted or damaged. It is the master index file of Outlook Express Store Folder and can affect other .dbx files as well if goes missing or damaged.

Solution

To solve the described issue, you need to follow these solutions:

1. You should check if the rule exists that might be directing the incoming mails. For this, open Outlook Express, go to Tools and then Message Rules. If no such rule is there, you can alternatively create a new rule to send the receiving emails to Inbox folder.

2. For fixing corrupted Folders.dbx file issue, you need to recreate it. Locate the file using Windows Search or Find option, right-click the file and click to rename it to Folders.old. Outlook Express will create a new Folders.dbx file, the next time when you will start the application.

If you find the other .dbx file(s) corrupted, you can rename them too by following the same procedure as above, provided you have a valid backup. However, you can repair the corrupted .dbx files by using DBX Repair software. The commercial DBX Recovery software are most suitable applications that can repair and restore a corrupted .dbx file by using powerful and safe scanning algorithms.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook Express Recovery is a comprehensive mail recovery utility designed to repair corrupted DBX files created with Outlook Express 5.x and 6.x. It is an advanced and non-destructive DBX Repair software that uses effective scanning algorithms. It can also repair *.eml messages that can be directly opened and viewed in Outlook Express.