Debbie Parker Wayne
Wayne Research
P.O. Box 397, Cushing, TX 75760-0397
Phone: 936-326-9101

Finding "Things" In e-mail

BE AWARE: Unless you REALLY understand what you are doing you should NEVER remove or modify files in the system folders or any file if you don't know what effect it will have on your system. So take care with the information covered in this section. Before opening one of these files copy it to another name and open that copy. Take care never to harm the original file.

Many applications save data in "system" folders such as C:\Program Files\ or C:\Windows\Application Data\ so a search that doesn't include these folders will not find the data. One way to handle this is to search the entire disk, usually C:\, when you can't find something you are searching for.

However, some files are in a format where it effectively hides the data from any application other than the one that creates it. In that case you may be forced to use a built-in search tool in the application that created the file. So if you use your e-mail program to save all the information you receive via e-mail you may have to use the e-mail program to do searches within that data.

I use folders inside of my e-mail program strictly to sort incoming e-mail and to have a "ToDo" folder of e-mail I haven't yet responded to. I don't like saving e-mail long-term inside the e-mail application. It can be hard to find and hard to convert when you get a new e-mail application or new computer.

A MUCH better method of saving e-mail, in my opinion, is to save the e-mail text into a standard text file (.txt file extension) into a properly organized folder structure (as we will discuss later). Use the e-mail application's "Save As" feature. Then you should be able to easily use the Windows find / search utilities to find your data when you can't remember where it is. Also, instead of saving each individual e-mail into a separate file, I group messages together into one or a few files per topic or per correspondent. For example, johndoe2002.txt and johndoe2003.txt for correspondence in 2002/2003 with John Doe.

The reason I do not save each individual e-mail separately is because most are small in size (1 - 10KBytes) and the smallest "chunk" of disk that can be allocated is often a 32KByte chunk. So if I save 4 different 8Kbyte e-mails into 4 separate files, instead of using 32Kbytes (4*8) of disk space it would use 128KBytes (4*32) of disk space. This may not be as important with the large disk sizes we have today but if you still have a smaller size disk it can have a significant impact on the free space available.

(The exact minimum disk space "chunk" or "cluster" depends on your Windows version, the file system type, and the size of the disk. Many Windows books will have a chart showing cluster size for different configurations.)

If you need to know WHERE your e-mail program is saving files to do manual analysis (that is, look for something when the e-mail find utility can't find something you think should be there) this section my help locate the files

BUT REMEMBER THE CAUTION ABOVE
- don't change the files if you don't know what you are doing.
Make a copy of the file, then open it with Notepad
(or other text editor) to do your analysis.

Depending on your Windows and e-mail program version numbers, and what e-mail program is used, your e-mail files may be in different locations:

Windows 98 / Outlook Express:

C:\Windows\Application Data\Outlook Express\YOURuserNAME\

C:\Windows\Application Data\Identities\{A LONG NUMBER}\
	Microsoft\Outlook Express\

Inbox.dbx is your inbox
You will also see DeletedItems.dbx, Drafts.dbx, SentItems.dbx and the other mailbox folders or organizational items.

NOTE: .dbx files are not pure text files, they are database files. Although they can be opened in a text editor like Notepad, you will see a lot of garbage-looking data and you MUST NOT CHANGE the file. Make a copy of the file and open the COPY with a text editor to view.

YOURuserNAME.wab is your address book and it is in a DIFFERENT folder

Windows XP / Outlook Express:

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\
	Identities\{A LONG NUMBER}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

   (See notes above about INbox.dbx, etc.)

Owner.wab is your address book and it is in
 C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\
	\Microsoft\Address Book\

Windows XP / Mozilla 1.3:

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\
	Mozilla\Profiles\default\[8 digits].slt\Mail\mail.ISP\

Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash - pure text files but there is also a .msf file associated with each that keeps track of messages. There will also be an entry here for each folder you make to save e-mail into.

Up 2 folder levels to the folder named [8 digits].slt you will find
abook.mab - your address book
bookmarks.html - your bookmarks (what IE calls favorites) and other files used by the browser and mail clients