Thank you PA Bear for your thoughtful response - what's more, it worked!
DBXpress recovered 4,414 messages! I think only a very few failed (I
remember the subject of those). Now I've put them into the local folders, as
you suggested (I had assumed the Inbox & Sent folders acted in the same way,
hence never bothered to compact, etc.)
And I'll certainly follow your guidance for the future.
Thanks very much,
DimitriR

"PA Bear [MS MVP]" wrote:

I would NOT attempt to replace INBOX.DBX in your store with a renamed
INBOX.BAK that's +2GB!

[I'm surprised that OE was even working with an inbox that size! One
can only imagine the total size of your identity's store...]

My recommendation is as follows:

1. Create a new desktop folder named RECOVER INBOX.

2. Move INBOX.BAK from the Recycle Bin to the desktop folder you created in
#1 above and rename it to INBOXOLD.DBX.

3. Purchase, download & install DBXpress (faster, more powerful, with even
greater functionality than DBXtract):
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

4. Run DBXpress on INBOXOLD.DBX. Any messages recovered (don't set your
hopes too high) can then be dragged to any open OE folder.

= Avoiding Such Corruption in Futu

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Frequently perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working
offline". More at http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- Do not shut down your machine while Windows is automatically compacting
your message store.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages), it provides no additional protection,
and even Symantec says it's not necessary:

QP
Disabling Email Scanning does not leave you unprotected against viruses that
are distributed as email attachments. Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect scans
incoming files as they are saved to your hard drive, including email and
email attachments. Email Scanning is just another layer on top of this. To
make sure that Auto-Protect is providing the maximum protection, keep
Auto-Protect enabled and run LiveUpdate regularly to ensure that you have
the most recent virus definitions.
/QP
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02111812533106
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Desktop Experience - since 2002
AumHa VSOP & Admin http://aumha.net
DTS-L http://dts-l.net/

DimitriR wrote:
My inbox crashed. After reading several threads, I compacted all files,
and
the inbox went to the Recycling Bin. I found the problem was the size of
my
inbox - 2+GB!. How/where can I restore it so that I can edit the file,
splitting up what I need into smaller files and deleting the rest?
I presume I can't open it without OE? How can I do that without crashing
OE
all over again?
System: I have OE6 on XP SP3
DimitriR