OE Is Deleting My NG Headers

"Neil" wrote in message
...

"Gerry" wrote in message
...
Robert

Also, what's the point of having a "Delete news messages X days
after being downloaded" if OE is just going to delete them anyway,
regardless of the setting. Again, doesn't make sense.


Makes perfect sense if someone only wants to keep a weeks worth
of posts in his cache instead of a much larger number that the server
might support.

Your comment is correct . It was logical. It was also part of one of the
most disastrous and problematic features of Outlook Express. Compacting.
Checking this feature was blamed for countless losses of messages.
Automatic compacting was abandoned by users in favour of manual
compacting Offline. The changes made to automatic compacting not so long
ago improved the situation but did not totally resolve the problem.
Manual compacting before automatic compacting is triggered remains the
safest option. The option to "Delete news messages X days after being
downloaded" should have been removed when the other changes were made.


When does automatic compacting take place?

On the 101st closing after the last compaction.
--
Ronald Sommer

"Neil" wrote in message
...

OE is doing what a newsreader is supposed to do, keep the messages on
your
computer synched with the newsgroup server.

Again, that was not the way OE used to work. It used to retain all msgs
that were downloaded.

I don't know of any newsreaders that do not sync with the server.
You have not mentioned what news server that you are using.

Why is that germane to the discussion?



The Microsoft server has a 90 day retention period.
--
Ronald Sommer



It is very germane.
You are incorrectly basing your idea of the operation of OE on a news server
that had a long retention period.
I have news servers that have a long retention period.
Because you insist on saying that OE used to keep all posts without saying
what news server that you were using, you haven't proved that your version
of OE works the way that you say.
--
Ronald Sommer

Neil

Loss of newgroup messages. This can happen if something happens to cause
the folder (file) to corrupt. A power failure could cause corruption if
data was being written to the file and the process was interupted.
Newsgroup folders can get very large so that a system lacking resources
in terms of memory and CPU capacity can have difficulty handling the
file. In this situation the chances of interuption and corruption are
greater. Interupting the automatic compaction process is the most common
cause of file corruption. Normally users report loss of messages from
the inbox or sent items folders. These messages are irreplaceable,
whereas messages in newsgroup folders can easily be replaced. As a
consequence loss of newsgroup messages is not commonly reported.

The delete option when compacting was also a common cause of file
corruption because it could be working when Outlook Express was amongst
other things Online. Compacting was supposed to work in the background
allowing the user to continue to use Outlook Express for reading,
writing and posting messages. It was a disaster. The opportunities for
interupting the compaction process were significantly increased and file
corruption was common until the user of Outlook Express learnt how to
adopt practices to minimise the risk. In the absence of measures from
Microsoft to resolve the problem Steve Cochran, posting in this
conversation, wrote his first message recovery utility, DBXtract, to
help users recover messages from corrupted dbx files. The delete option
was specifically designed to work with Compacting messages in the
Background. You had to select the option to Compact Messages in the
Background for the delete option to work. When Microsoft eventually
removed the option to Compact Messages in the Background they overlooked
the delete option and it became a redundant relic.

Another way to lose newsgroup messages is to unintentionally delete
messages by clicking on the wrong button. In Tools, Options,
Maintenance, CleanUp now are four buttons. One is Compact but the other
three buttons all remove the contents of the selected folder.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil wrote:
It does make sense. Apart from differences only available by using
a synchronize command the main thing that you need to be aware of
is the Get 300 headers... option and the fact that its value is
used to do
an automatic Get Next 300... every time you enter a newsgroup when
you are in a Working Online state.

I don't have any problem getting headers. OE gets them for me
automatically when I enter a newsgroup. No problem. And I have it set
to 1,000, not 300. So the Next 1,000 command works fine too. No
problem there. But that has nothing to do with what I'm saying.


If you don't want that to happen,
either don't enter that newsgroup or enter it with Work Offline set.

I do want it to happen. And it's happening. No problem.


If you don't have the Get next 300... option checked the automatic
Get next done for you has the equivalent effect of a Synchronize
Newsgroup command done while the Synchronize settings are
Headers Only.

OK.


And, like I said, didn't used to be that way. I remember a point
where OE would keep downloaded headers indefinitely.


Was this with a different NNTP server? In any case servers change
how they act over time and they may also be set up to serve different
newsgroups differently.

I can't say if it was a different one, or when exactly it changed. I
remember, though, that headers would stay indefinitely, and I had at
least a years' worth of headers in one particular newsgroup. One day
I was playing aroudn with the synchronization settings, and then I
lost all my headers! I was aghast. So I changed it back to No
Synchronization. But ever since then, it kept deleting old headers,
though it never did it before I played around with the
synchronization settings.
But that was on a different PC anyway. This laptop is only about six
months old, and that was a few years ago that it happened. So
anything that happened on that PC wouldn't affect what happens on
this PC (and I didn't bring my message stores over from another PC or
anything). So, even though I can trace the point in time when it
changed to when I changed the synchronization settings (and then
changed back to No Synchronization), that wouldn't explain why it's
happening on this PC, which had a new install of OE.

Neil

Rich/rerat

Those were the days G.

--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Rich/rerat wrote:
Neil,
This featured was introduced in Outlook Express 5. It was considered
a "bug" in the beta stage, by some, and an improvement by others,
from OE4. So this "bug" or feature has been around close to a decade
now.

Since many ISP's are dropping newsgroup service, people have had to
choose another service. Many of the "free" news companies, have a
short retention period for storing messages on their servers. This
means they can keep their costs down, and be able to offer the free
service to the public. But it also means that this OE action will be
more noticeable to users, if they did not see it before, because
their former new service, had a longer message retention policy.
People will need to have to subscribe to News companies that have a
longer retention policy, which they will need to pay for themselves.
Or create a new local folder or folders, and copy/move the message
you want to keep to this (these) folder(s).

As stated many times in this newsgroup, the OE development team has
been disbanded, so their will be no new adjustments/fixes/upgrades to
this application, except for the occasional security update.

Here is a short list of newsgroup threads found in Google Newsgroups,
about this subject.

OE5 removes messages from local file! Thread Posted on 2/16/1999

microsoft.public.inetexplorer.ie5beta.outlookexpre ss

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...+news+messages

Another thread about this Posted:

microsoft.public.inetexplorer.ie4.outlookexpress newsgroup 6/26/2000

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...e258565f148135

Who were the people on the Outlook Express Development Team?
--
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor

"Gerry" wrote in message
...

As stated many times in this newsgroup, the OE development team has
been disbanded, so their will be no new adjustments/fixes/upgrades to
this application, except for the occasional security update.

Actually Bear Rich/rerat has posted a Google thread from February 2000
containing a similar post by me on the same topic. MM is in another
thread from the OE5 beta group of 1999, which I did not read at the time
referring to the same topic. I remember that time well because of
disgreements over how the Move to Folder command worked.A certain Bear
was not on the Outlook Express stage at that time big grin.


--


Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PA Bear [MS MVP] wrote:
[OMG, now Gerry's got MasterPosts! eek]

Gerry wrote:
Neil

An extract from one of my posts from February 2004.

A factor in storing messages is the time news messages are held on
the news server...

When OE opens, it checks the count. If the count is 100, the compaction
message will appear when you close OE.
There is no automatic compaction, because the user has to ok the compaction.
The count changes on the opening of OE.
The compaction message will not appear until the 101st close of OE.
--
Ronald Sommer

"Gerry" wrote in message
...
Neil

On closing Outlook Express 100 times. On some systems something changes
the counter in the Registry when it is not intended so automatic
compacting can be triggered quite a bit earlier. The counter is meant to
increment by one on closure but something else cause the counter to
increment at other times. Bruce Hagen writes about this regularly. It
doesn't happen here.

--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil wrote:
"Gerry" wrote in message
...
Robert

Also, what's the point of having a "Delete news messages X days
after being downloaded" if OE is just going to delete them anyway,
regardless of the setting. Again, doesn't make sense.


Makes perfect sense if someone only wants to keep a weeks worth
of posts in his cache instead of a much larger number that the
server might support.

Your comment is correct . It was logical. It was also part of one of
the most disastrous and problematic features of Outlook Express.
Compacting. Checking this feature was blamed for countless losses of
messages. Automatic compacting was abandoned by users in favour of
manual compacting Offline. The changes made to automatic compacting
not so long ago improved the situation but did not totally resolve
the problem. Manual compacting before automatic compacting is
triggered remains the safest option. The option to "Delete news
messages X days after being downloaded" should have been removed
when the other changes were made.


When does automatic compacting take place?

Why do you add Crossposting to every reply you make? Totally unnecessary.
--

Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
Imperial Beach, CA


"D. Spencer Hines" wrote in message
...
Who were the people on the Outlook Express Development Team?
--
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor

"Gerry" wrote in message
...

As stated many times in this newsgroup, the OE development team has
been disbanded, so their will be no new adjustments/fixes/upgrades to
this application, except for the occasional security update.

I do not know. Leading lights who tried to persuade the Team to go in
the right direction were Tom Koch and Steve Cochran amongst others.

Tom Koch
http://www.insideoe.com/resources/communities.htm

Steve Cochran
http://www.oehelp.com/Default.aspx

--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

D. Spencer Hines wrote:
Who were the people on the Outlook Express Development Team?

As stated many times in this newsgroup, the OE development team has
been disbanded, so their will be no new adjustments/fixes/upgrades
to this application, except for the occasional security update.

Neil wrote:


The messages are still there. Just many of them are gone.

They are there.
They are gone.
Oh really. ;-)))