Can't Delete Email in Outlook Express - Comments

I discovered something about Outlook that I don't think most users are aware of. If you look at your Deleted Items file, there will be nothing in it, but, when you check it's size, it's gigantic. In Windows Explorer, this file can be deleted and the next time Outlook is opened, it will be back but empty. I think this is true of all the folders as long as you have rebooted since creating any folders. Just be sure you want an empty folder before you have a disaster.

I've had the EXACT same problem with my Outlook Express, and got frustrated to the point where I finally downloaded Thunderbird and transferred all my Outlook Express files to there. I was told that Service Pack 2 is to blame for this glitch in Outlook Express, and that if I have a good firewall and current anti-virus program, I can remove SP2 to resolve this problem. What's your input on that?

The SP2 updates get blamed (and rightfully so) for a lot of things that go wrong. But in this case, I'm not sure if removing SP2 will help. There are a lot of important security patches in SP2 and I would be skeptical about what shape your PC will be left in after trying to roll it back.

Did you try Shift-Delete and the other suggestions mentioned above?

I also had this problem with only 2 emails that I could not do anything with, what I ended up doing was move all othe emails from the in box to a temporary folder, closing outlook express and then going to my computer- c drive - documents and settings - (my) user - local settings (which is a system folder)- application data - Idenities - Microsoft - Outlook express.
in this folder are all of the .dbx folders.
Delete the inbox.dbx folder.
Open Outlook express it will automaticly make a new Inbox folder and you can move the other messages back in.

Thanks for the post. This helped me with a customer that I had spent 30 minutes troubleshooting with.

The close preview pane and shift+delete worked.

I have the same problem an empty deleted items folder but the deleted items file is about 900meg. It has nothing to do with SP2 as I have never installed it. I have renamed this file as described above and then re started my computer, next time an email is deleted a new deleted items folder is created. I have just found that the outbox folder is doing the same thing. I will try doing the same thing to it.
Mike

I just fixed this problem thanks to the suggestions on this page. I think I know what caused it though.

I recently moved to another system, so I copied the .dbx files over to import. It kept crashing on import, and I tried several times. I was also importing Deleted Items, so the Deleted Items folder grew to be 2 GB somehow. My guess is that OE just choked on this huge file when trying to add new deleted items to it, or that the import crashes corrupted the file.

Thanks! This also helped me with a customer that I spent 20 minutes trouble shooting with. Closing the preview pane and shift+delete worked like a charm. A+ job people!

I`ve been on the phone with Rogers and Microsoft for an hour each with no luck. Simple advice from your column fixed my Outlook Express problem in 2 minutes. Thank you sir. You`ve been added to my Favorites.

WinXp Pro SP2.
Had an identical problems myself and the shift-delete workek just fine but then I went into the "Deleted Items" folders and manually deleted about 10% of the messages from there and after that everything worked pefectly. So there must be maximum memory setting in windows for how much you can put into the "Deleted Items" folder.