Restore mail?

[Roger]

I have taken a full backup of my C drive with "Windows Vista Backup and
Restore".
Now I discovered that all my mail in the "Sent" folder are missing.
What file(s) do I have to restore to get my mail back?

 

[Michael Santovec]

Before doing any restore, select the "Sent" folder, then View, Current
View and make sure that Show All Messages is checked and nothing else.
Your missing messages might just be hidden.

Not having Vista, I'm not familiar with the capabilities of that
program. Does it allow you to restore to an alternate location?

If so, restore the
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live
Mail
folder to a new folder. Then in WLM you can use File, Import, Messages,
From WLM and browse to the restore location and select the folders that
you want to import. After import, look for them under Storage Folders,
Imported Folders. You can then move the messages to the folder that
they need to be in.

 

[...winston]

Vista's 'Backup and Restore Center' restores individual files and folders.
If used properly you will be asked.
Where do you want to save the restored files ?
- Original location
- In the following location


As Michael also suggested, choose the latter to avoid damaging anything current in WLM, then use WLM to browse and import the the
messages.

 

[Roger]

Thank you Michael & Winston for your answers.

I found the file in:
Computer\C:\users\%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Local
Folders\Sent Items
I could restore the files to a different location, but I could NOT import
the files. I got an error message telling me that another program may use
the files or no files found.
So I restored to original location, and that worked.

Hope somebody else can get a little help from this.

Roger

 

[Michael Santovec]

If the import fails, there is another method. The restored folders will
contain EML files, one per message. The files names won't make much
sense, they will look like 3C12016D-0000000E.eml

But the folders will roughly correspond to your WLM folders. How
roughly will depend on how much folder renaming and moving you've done
in WLM.

You can from Windows Explorer drag-and-drop the EML files into a WLM
folder in the WLM interface. You might create a new empty storage
folder in WLM to drop the message into in order to see what you got.
Then if it's what you want, move them to the intended folder.

 

[...winston]

Thanks for responding Roger,
That is helpful information about restoring a WLM file's 'Sent' message from the Vista Back/Restore archive to the original
location.

Michael has already covered an alternate route, to echo on that same topic..
- If I may ask what was the extension of the file(s) restored to the 'different location' ?

 

[Roger]

The files restored to a "different location" (temporary folder) was called
was all called (long row of letters & numbers).eml except for one called
winmail.fol.

 

[...winston]

Thanks..