Delete extra OE Identity? (OE 6; Win XP SP 2 home)

Topic

New Reply

Hi all – In another post, I came across directions to where OE files are stored. I’ve been saving email I wanted permanently to My Docs folders, backing them up, and taking my chances with the rest but, seeing this, decided it’s time I began doing a direct OE backup. I followed the directions to C:/DocumentsandSettings/UserName/LocalSettings/ApplicationData/Identities/ and found two folders with (different) long numbers, each containing a Microsoft folder containing an Outlook Express folder. There’s only one user of this PC. One of the OE folders seems to be complete, containing all current OE folders including a cleanup.log dated 09/17/04. The other has only a few of my folders, plus a cleanup.log dated 09/16/03. I vaguely recall a problem of being unable to access OE after changing my User name, having to reconfigure OE, then having the duplicate “disappear.” I’m not sure which is the original, but clearly I want to keep the current one. Can I just delete the other “long number” folder, with its OE folder, or is there some chance of a problem there if, say, it was the original OE? Thanks for any suggestions. – Maud

Reply | Quote

Replies

There’s nothing to stop you deleting the second one (although I’d move it elsewhere first, effectively deleting it as far as OE is concerned but giving you a fallback if you need to retrieve it). Do it while OE is closed and when you reopen OE, if it is using that set of folders it’ll complain it can’t find it; then you can put it back.

Alternatively, to pull the contents of the old folders into your current system (in order to investigate the contents), make sure the names do not duplicate any current folders (the current ones will be overwritten if they do) then use File, Import to pull them in and investigate. If the names do duplicate, then (in Windows Explorer) change the names of the old ones to unique names before importing them to avoid problems.

HTH

Reply | Quote

Beryl,
Thanks so much for the response. Out of idle curiousity, I tried renaming the folders which contained messages and importing them to my current OE, but the import wizard said it needed something which was in use to make the transfer, as I had OE open to initiate the import. I really didn’t need any of those things anymore, so I closed OE and transferred the unwanted Identity to My Docs and reopened OE, as you suggested, and there was no difficulty with this, so I will simply delete the transferred Identity. Thanks again!
Maud

Reply | Quote

Beryl,
Thanks so much for the response. Out of idle curiousity, I tried renaming the folders which contained messages and importing them to my current OE, but the import wizard said it needed something which was in use to make the transfer, as I had OE open to initiate the import. I really didn’t need any of those things anymore, so I closed OE and transferred the unwanted Identity to My Docs and reopened OE, as you suggested, and there was no difficulty with this, so I will simply delete the transferred Identity. Thanks again!
Maud

Reply | Quote

There’s nothing to stop you deleting the second one (although I’d move it elsewhere first, effectively deleting it as far as OE is concerned but giving you a fallback if you need to retrieve it). Do it while OE is closed and when you reopen OE, if it is using that set of folders it’ll complain it can’t find it; then you can put it back.

Alternatively, to pull the contents of the old folders into your current system (in order to investigate the contents), make sure the names do not duplicate any current folders (the current ones will be overwritten if they do) then use File, Import to pull them in and investigate. If the names do duplicate, then (in Windows Explorer) change the names of the old ones to unique names before importing them to avoid problems.

HTH

Reply | Quote