Pinging Sharon

[Sharon F]

[10 quoted lines suppressed]

Thanks Sharon...I put the back up site for the downloads in my bookmarks. I
hate to be a pest, but I spent a long time writing and explaining the logic
on my last post to you. Was I correct in what I said. Basically (to
summarize it), that I thought you had to back up the .dbx folders
individually and not just the parent folders (like you said you did),
because the parent folders do not contain their subfolders (only the
messages directly within them). I thought I explained it pretty clearly and
was hoping to get some feedback. The site you gave me does not address
everything I wrote about....Pete

Yes, you're logic is good when using OE mechanisms only to backup. The
folders.dbx, as I said in my last post, is needed too if using that method.
If you use a dedicated OE backup program, it takes care of those details
for you automagically.

 

[Pete]

[10 quoted lines suppressed]

Thanks Sharon...I put the back up site for the downloads in my
bookmarks. I hate to be a pest, but I spent a long time writing and
explaining the logic on my last post to you. Was I correct in what
I said. Basically (to summarize it), that I thought you had to back
up the .dbx folders individually and not just the parent folders
(like you said you did), because the parent folders do not contain
their subfolders (only the messages directly within them). I
thought I explained it pretty clearly and was hoping to get some
feedback. The site you gave me does not address everything I wrote
about....Pete

Yes, you're logic is good when using OE mechanisms only to backup. The
folders.dbx, as I said in my last post, is needed too if using that
method. If you use a dedicated OE backup program, it takes care of
those details for you automagically.

I'm sorry Sharon but you have me confused. Here is what you wrote before -
"By keeping items that I want to preserve in two main folders, Saved Mail
and Saved News, I can backup those folders. After some time, about every
6months or so, I do one big backup and empty out those folders to start the
process over".

But you also said that you had other sub folders in those two main folders
(which implies the sub folders contained all your messages, not the main
folders). So my point is you couldn't have backed up the two main folders
because they would be empty (ie you would have to back up each of the sub
folders *individually* because that's the way OE saves the stuff (in the
individual .dbx files for each folder name).

I still don't know how the "folders.dbx" file ties in with all the other sub
folder files, but I don't think its just mainly for indexing (like you
said), because its too big. I think that if I wanted to replace a subfolder
with a different subfolder with the same title (say "old inbox.dbx") it
would put the new subfolder in and the messages, would be replaced
regardless of the "folders.dbx" file. I may be wrong (ie do the two have to
work together). I can't remember exactly how I transferred my messages from
my Me to my xp. I thought I just copied the "old inbox.dbx" and the "sent
items.dbx" into the appropriate location in explorer, and made a new folder
in my xp called "old inbox" - I don't remember copying the "folders.dbx"
file also, but I may have, just to have been safe.

Sorry for all this, I'm out of steam...Pete

 

[Sharon F]

But you also said that you had other sub folders in those two main folders
(which implies the sub folders contained all your messages, not the main
folders). So my point is you couldn't have backed up the two main folders
because they would be empty (ie you would have to back up each of the sub
folders *individually* because that's the way OE saves the stuff (in the
individual .dbx files for each folder name).

Pete, that part of your logic - I don't know about. I have never had a
problem with my OE backups.

Although represented as such, the message store is not really folders at
all. It is a database so there are no "empty folders" or full ones for that
matter. Dragging messages out of OE to a hard drive folder, took time as
each message had to be individually extracted and a new .eml or .news file
created. So some interaction that you would expect from "real" folders just
isn't there when working with OE. That's why I encouraged experimenting.

For clarification on the finer points about backing up OE, you really
should use that Inside OE web page and/or the OE newsgroups.

 

[Pete]

Pete, that part of your logic - I don't know about. I have never had a
problem with my OE backups.

Although represented as such, the message store is not really folders
at all. It is a database so there are no "empty folders" or full ones
for that matter.

I understand that Sharon. The message store *is* in the .dbx file which
has the same name as the folder, and how all the different messages are
extracted out of the one file is bizarre programming stuff which is way over
my head. I am sorry to bother you so much. All I know is I transferred two
..dbx files from my Me to my xp and it worked. I hope we are still friends.
You have been most helpful in the past. Thank you for all your time...Pete

Dragging messages out of OE to a hard drive folder,

 

[Sharon F]

I hope we are still friends.
You have been most helpful in the past. Thank you for all your time...Pete

No doubt about it, still friends.

You're most welcome!