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ammounpierre

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How to permanently delete (wipe out) email from Outlook Express

For security reasons, I have to delete a bunch of emails from my Outlook Express. But while searching for a tool to do so ...I found that there are tools that can retrieve emails even if deleted !!
Is what I am looking for not available ?
I need those emails to completely disappear and not being available from any tool.It is extremely high security data that I need to be wiped-out.
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youngrmy
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To permanently delete a message bypassing the Deleted Items folder in Outlook:

Hold down the Shift key while pressing Del.
Click Yes
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Above will not delete the files permanently, what you have to do to ensure they are wiped out and gone for good is on the Top Tool bar Click on Tools, Options.
Click the Maintenance Tab, Click on the Clean Up Now Button.

Then Click the Buttons in this order:  Remove Messages, Delete ,  Reset,  Compact.

Answer Yes if prompted at any time.

Once you have done the above , Close, OK and Exit Outlook Express.

All deleted messages and associated file references are now wiped out and not recoverable!

Wes
Hello ammounpierre,

After deleting the emails in Delete Items folder, you need to compact the folders to permanently delete the emails.  wmiller above method is one way to compact the folders.

An easier way would be to go to File menu then selecting Folders then the COMPACT option you prefer.

Hope this helps!
war1
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ammounpierre

ASKER

Is the compacted data completely deleted or it can be recovered using certain tools ?
I am compacting the file but it is so fast that I doubt it is doing anything..
besides , the deleted items file (deleted items.dbx) is quite big (around 2Mb ..where as I have nothing there...
I renamed the deleted items.dbx and re-opened the outlook express and checked it created a new deleted items.dbx which is only 139Kb ..which is the right size...
This is making me doubt as to if reallt deleted items are really deleted !!!
thanks for ur help.
When you compact the folders, Deleted Items folder should have been compacted, if it was emptied previously.

When you delete na email in Inbox, part of the email remains in inbox.dbx file.  If you do not compact the Inbox folder, email remains there to be recovered.  If you compact it, the email cannot be recovered from the file.

The Deleted Items folder is temporary pointer to the email. The real email is in Inbox.dbx.  So deleted item.dbx file does not matter.
I am surprised to hear that compacting the deleted items.dbx folder removes the files from the hard drive though I know it removes them from the deleted files.dbx folder. If non-OE files are "Deleted" they are, in fact, still on the hard drive (and can be recovered using tools such as Restoration, to name only one) until the space they occupy is overwritten by some other data.  I guess I have learned something new.  
Im still confused guys...
compacting does delete all the deleted or no ?
ammounpierre,

Compacting does delete all the emails in Deleted Items folder.  It does so with mine Outlook Express.
OK, so what you need to do is try for yourself and see if you can find any remaining data in any of your *.dbx files after deleting, compacting, or whatever else you have done and tried.  Think like the person who would potentially seek to view sensitive data.

The first thing to consider is that some content in an email is temporarily cached in the Temporary Internet Files folder of whatever user opens the email.  Normally you cannot open the sub-folders of your own TIF folder to see all the temporary files in Windows Explorer, but if you make a shortcut to it using the command as follows, it will allow access to all sub-folders:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e,%homepath%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5

Once there, you need a program capable of viewing the contents of any files remaining in those folders.

The EDIT command opens just about any file in a very raw mode in a Command window, but takes a bit of scrolling around to see if any content is legible as text.  As an example, If you have ever had MS Word configured to "Allow Fast Saves", then you will find that deleted text is visible in the EDIT window.

Redirecting contents of a file to a text file using the command:

type filename > filename.txt

will give you some textual content in the file when opened in Notepad, but only if the file contains some text strings.

By installing a small utility named PEEK, you can extract binary, plain text, or unicode text to a new *.txt file that opens in Notepad when you Right-Click the target file and choose "Peek".  The extracted contents remain in your TEMP folder as Peek.txt until you do another Peek, and they are then overwritten.  This is done without altering the target file.

Download and Unzip:
http://members.ping.at/mlubich/peek11.zip
to its own folder, then Right-Click on "peek.INF" and choose "Install".  The new Right-Click menu is immediately available, and you can uninstall it normally if needed.

There are utilities intended as "*.dbx recovery" utilities that can easily be used to open the contents of DBX files to view the contents.  Obviously very useful for emergencies, they can be misused - by YOU in this case for verification.

DBXtract (OE 5 & 6 formats) - only $7.00:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/


Better still, Mitec OE View will do its best to open emails contained in OE 4, 5, and 6 DBX, etc file formats, and display them as emails rather than text, and with attachments:

http://www.mitec.cz/oeview.html
http://www.mitec.cz/Downloads/OEView.zip

I would suggest that if none of these methods show anything of any value, then you can be assured that nobody else is likely to discover sensitive emails that you thought were deleted and gone.

Bill
I've saved you the trouble of testing the above utility programs (Noitepad, Edit, Peek, OEView, and DBXtract).  After compacting the "Deleted Items.dbx" file, it contains NO data whatsoever remaining from the original messages there before compaction.  The only data left related to the file headers and functionality of the file "folder".
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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jcimarron
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If anyone is interested, this German guy has documented details of the *.dbx file format at great length.  I can only assume he doesn't have a social life :-)
http://oedbx.aroh.de/index.html
ammounpierre--My post of yesterday was based on an understanding that you did not want email deleted from OE to be recoverable.  I tried to indicate there is a difference between deleting files from OE's Deleted Items.dbx file (which you do by compacting) and erasing all traces of those emails from the hard drive.  Once deleted from the  Deleted Items.dbx file you cannot read the emails from within OE.  However, a file recovery program can still read the files from the hard drive.  So you have to overwrite the files on the harddrive and/or encrypt the files before you "delete" and compact.
Thank you ammounpierre