Try
- Moving (drag and drop) the messages from the inbox to any other folder. Of course, a move is an implicit delete so this might not work.
- In stead of move: copy them (drag and drop with control pressed). I suppose this works, which saves your messages.
Then go into Windows, find the file Inbox.dbx (that's the Outlook Express inbox and delete it. Outlook Express will create a new undamaged EMPTY inbox if you run it again.
Now you can move back your messages to the inbox, if you like, or leave them in the other folder where you copied them to.
I'm sure 5.7 Mb is not too big for Outlook Express. My largest file is 26 Mb, without any problems.
Don't forget to compress your OE folders occasionally; File>Compress>Compress all folders. This makes them smaller by 'filling the holes' that come if you delete mail from them.
Hope this helps.
Kees
I just tried to use Outlook Express to download my messages from my E-Mail accounts. There are 2 accounts, my ISP and Hotmail. It downloaded both just fine and I can read the mail in both. However, when I try to delete the E-Mail in the Inbox for my ISP, Outlook Express crashes. The Hotmail account works just fine. So it appears not to be Outlook itself but something with the Inbox on my ISP's account. BTW, I tried deleting files from other folders in my ISP's account and they delete properly. Obviously something is messed up with the Inbox. I used Explorer to find where Outlook Express stores the folders and found them and the Inbox for my ISP is at 5.9 megs. I read where Outlook Express had a problem with folders that were large. Could this be the problem? Is there any way to work around it? I was thinking about exporting the messages individually, at least from the inbox folder, and then restoring the ISP account and bringing back the messages one by one into various folders to keep the size down. Does this sound feasible?
I was going to try to export the messages to another folder but the Export function does not work unless I open Outlook or Exchange, make it the default mail program, and export to it. There was a message a long time ago that gave a procedure for exporting Outlook messages to a csv or comma delimited file but can't find it right now. Does anyone remember this procedure? Any hopes that it will fix the problem. I was going to export the folders and reestablish the account for my ISP. Anyone have any ideas?
I know I have lots of questions here but bear with me. TIA,
John

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic