SillyDog701

[jbvk]

I am trying to import messages into Outlook 2003. I recently had a hard drive failure, have reloaded Outlook and have opened my .pst files. However, I've discovered that some messages are missing and I see that I have a (recovered) mail.sbd folder which contains several subfolders which have data files (no extensions, but all the same filename) that would appear to house my missing messages.

The odd thing is that I was working in Outlook 2003 when the drive crashed and the missing messages were all being processed by Outlook. Now I can't seem to find any way to import or open these files.

I think this may have happened as a result of having used Thunderbird for a brief period as my mail client.

If I wasn't in such dire need of accessing these missing messages for work, I would move permanently to Thunderbird. But that's for another day.

Can anyone tell me how I can import these messages back into Outlook 2003 ?

Thank you.

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[PaulD]

If you are desperate, would either of these alternatives help?
1. If you have a viable Thunderbird available, use it to Forward the messages to yourself, then read them in Outlook.
2. TB messages are textual format. The content could be Copy/Paste-d into an Outlook message-to-yourself as in (1). The From / To / Date / etc. are editable, although they won't necessarily be in the HTML format that one is familiar with.

Or, just work with two windows: the Notepad/Wordpad text in one, Outlook email-ing in the other.

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[jbvk]

This is helpful as a short term fix, thank you.

But I would like to migrate the messages (a few thousand) back into Outlook so that I can search them with the original sender and date details intact.

If there is any way to do that, I'd love to know.

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[PaulD]

How good are you at hopscotch?

Here on Sillydog, bring up a Search.
- in the window, put [ outlook migrate ]
- check 'SillyDog701 Message Centre only'

From what I gather from the hits on the first page of results, one has to:
- get the mail folders into Netscape 4.7x (4.80 qualifies)
- Open them with Outlook Express, and export (?)
- Import into Outlook
---- Netscape 4.8 is available from http://sillydog.org/narchive/

Following are the threads that I've looked at. Although the questions concerned Netscape 7.x, the same procedure would work for Thunderbird since the mail folders are compatible.
- [sdt=12483]Outlook 2003 & mail.sbd[/sdt]
- [sdt=5700]Netscape to Outlook migration utilities[/sdt]
- [sdt=9980]Migrating mails from Mozilla to Outlook[/sdt]
- [sdt=3832]Moving emails from Netscape 7.1 to Outlook 2000[/sdt]

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[jbvk]

Thank you very much. Just completed a trial run with one of the smaller folders I need to transfer.

It's quite easy when you know what to do.

This is a godsend.

Thank you again.

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[PaulD]

1. I'm glad that was a little-g god. But I'm not that either.
2. You're quite welcome. Glad to be of (angelic?) help. Angel literally means a messenger. Usually of good news. Apropos of this Christmas season.
3. Yup, flying a 747 (or Airbus 340 if that is your preference) is easy too - when you know how. Not that I've ever had the pleasure of trying.

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[jbvk]

Well, now perhaps don't go too far away yet ....

I just noticed as I was going along that all of my newly imported folders have 50 messages in them.

Is there some setting that I have to check to ensure that all messages are read by Netscape ?

I've just informed myself about .snm files which have been created in the mail subfolder of Netscape. But those are header information files. Doesn't seem to be about them.

???

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[PaulD]

"... all of my newly imported folders have 50 messages in them."

1. Is this in Netscape 4.7 that there appear to be only 50 messages? Or is this OE?
2. Is there any chance that these are Newsgroup messages? (A common newsgroup download limit is 50, hence the suspicion. I don't have any to experiment with.)

The original post said: "I see that I have a (recovered) mail.sbd folder which contains several subfolders which have data files (no extensions, but all the same filename) that would appear to house my missing messages."
3. I don't understand this: "data files" ... "all the same filename". Can you give an example, please?
4. Are you retaining the sub-directory structure? Or have you 'promoted' each SBD file to be a 'full' mail folder?
5. Note that for a SBD to be valid, that there must be a same-named mail folder (Windows file) that is the 'parent'. Sub-directories are more particular.
5. This count of 50 - it is a number that Netscape is reporting?
6. It is safe to delete the .snm files; they are the summary indexes. Each will be rebuilt when Netscape next opens that mail folder. In fact, if there is any non-Netscape change to a mail folder then the SNM must be deleted. A common cause of mail problems is a mismatch between the SNM and the content of the mail folder itself; the first thrust at recovery is to delete the associated .snm file. Another mail problem can be a corrupted email.
7. Is it safe to assume that all mail folders have been Compressed (Netscape: right-click on folder name > Compress Folder), or could there be deleted emails lurking about?

Original post: "The odd thing is that I was working in Outlook 2003 when the drive crashed and the missing messages were all being processed by Outlook."
7. What 'processing' does Outlook do? Does it alter the content of a (TB) message? Or does it only copy the contents?
8. "... missing messages were all". Several Outlook windows? Importings?
9 (Maybe this should be number 1). If Outlook doesn't handle Thunderbird emails, how could an Outlook crash affect TB mail? Have you verified that the "missing messages" are in fact complete emails, generally readable as text? If they aren't textual, then they most likely aren't Netscape-compatible emails. (The exception is that an email attachment will show up as an encoded character string (base-64, etc.).)

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[jbvk]

1. Yes, this is in Netscape 4.79.
2. No, these are not newsgroup messages. They are mail messages. And I have chosen "View all messages".
3. Here is a sample folder tree: >Mail.sbd>Inbox.sbd>Home Stuff.sbd and in that subfolder is a file called "testnov6". Each subfolder in Inbox.sbd has a file called "testnov6" (no extension). They are different sizes, ranging from a few KB to a few MB. All show the same date for "last modified" which is Nov 6 2005, which would have been around the time I started using Outlook on my then new laptop. Also in the subfolder Inbox.sbd are files with the same name as the nested subfolders in Inbox.sbd. But these files are showing 0KB and no extension.
4. I was putting each testnov6 file into the Mail subfolder in Netscape (and renaming each to differntiate between them).
5. Netscape is reporting 50. And then OE reports 50, and Outlook reports 50.
6. Yes, I discovered this about .snm files and deleted them, and tried reopening, but with the same result, only 50 e-mails.
7.1 I haven't compressed any folders in Netscape. The folders may have originally been compressed in Thunderbird or Outlook.
7.2 Well that's a good question. What I can't get over, and perhaps I didn't express very well the first time is that these messages were arriving in Outlook 2003 and I was filing them in the subfolders. I was able to view them in these subfolders when using Outlook. (That's what I meant by processing them, layman's choice of words, not a technician's). I was able to search them, re-organize them by date or from field. And yet I can't get them back into Outlook without jumping through these hoops. Odd, no ?
8. No and No.
9. Yes, perhaps this should be number 1. I just opened the file using wordpad and the text is readable (large chunks are indeed encoded attachments). It appears that the file only contains those 50 messages, not any more. And I've noticed a new header something about "Aid4Mail" which I hadn't noticed before. I think I've been barking up the wrong tree. Clearly I used a trial version of this software at one point to try to migrate from Outlook to Thunderbird. Hence the 50 e-mail maximum per subfolder. So, with sincere apologies for my own stupidity, I'm still looking for a file from my crashed hard drive that contains the thousands of e-mails I was previously storing and viewing in Outlook before the crash. I have recovered all of the .pst files and those messages and folders are not among them. Is there another file extension I should look for ?

PaulD if you throw up your hands and curse my ID, I can't blame you. Thank you for your help.

(I decided to post this anyway in case it is ever helpful to others.)

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[PaulD]

First off - I apologize for the duplicate numberings. I kept thinking of changes and additions to earlier items, split some, and failed to renumber.

Curse your ID? Never!!! This has been an interesting what-turned-out-to-be-a rabbit trail. Intellectual exercise is the best kind. Compliments on your fortitude in posting anyway.

Thank you for the detailed, keyed, replies.

Although Microsoft Office is installed on my computer I don't use it (nor Express, either), so I don't have any knowledge of the file structures and names that it implements for emails.

1. What was the nature of the hard drive failure? And what was the method of recovery? I presume that you are still using the same physical drive. If there have been 'catastrophic' changes to either the Directory entries or to the File Allocation Table entries (whatever they are called in NTFS), which pertained to your email files - then I know of no 'user' procedure that can recover them. The only recourse would be to a commercial "data recovery service". I believe that they have tools that can examine every data block on a disk, even when the normal file structures have been disrupted. Manual reconstruction of the files most likely would be necessary.

2. IF by some remote chance the missing files still exist on the drive, but are masquerading under assumed names, then a scan for them by using Explorer and sorting by date or by file size should ferret them out. One would have to evaluate the name of each file to determine if further examination (Wordpad) of the content is called for. Only the folder(s) where Outlook stashes its mail need be examined. I don't think that folder migration need be considered.

3. I assume that each batch of 50 that you do have is usable.

4. Do you have any other files/archives/off-line storage that may just happen to contain at least some of these critical emails? Another possibility is to contact your correspondents to see if they can forward back to you any of their saved emails that are applicable. You would still have to do a logical reconstruction of the sbd's.

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