Advanced DBX Viewer

Advanced DBX Viewer User Guide

Advanced DBX Viewer opens the mail stores of Microsoft Outlook Express 5 and 6 – the .dbx files – on a current Windows PC without Outlook Express. This guide covers every feature: opening a store, reading and searching mail, saving attachments, exporting to Outlook PST and other formats, reading address books, recovering deleted messages and the forensic tools.

Contents

1. Opening Outlook Express files
2. Layout of the program window
3. Reading messages
4. Opening and saving attachments
5. Searching for messages
6. Columns, sorting and date groups
7. Saving and printing a single message
8. Exporting messages and folders
9. Moving Outlook Express mail to Outlook (PST)
10. File name patterns
11. Saving messages as PDF
12. Exporting the message list to CSV
13. Extracting attachments in bulk
14. Outlook Express address books (.wab)
15. Internet headers and message properties
16. Deleted messages and damaged files
17. Hashes, manifest and export log
18. Toolbar, menus and shortcuts
19. Solving common problems
20. Requirements and licensing

1. Opening Outlook Express files

Outlook Express keeps each mail folder in its own .dbx file (Inbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx, Deleted Items.dbx …) and the list of folders in Folders.dbx. Together these files are called the store. On an old Windows XP or Windows 98 PC the store is usually in
Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{identity}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
under the user’s profile folder; each Outlook Express identity has its own store. When you copy mail from an old PC or a backup, copy the whole folder.

1. Choose File > Open (Ctrl+O) or click Open on the toolbar.
2. Select Folders.dbx to open the whole store, or any other .dbx file to open just that folder.
3. The folder tree appears on the left: Local Folders with Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Drafts and your own folders, plus IMAP and newsgroup accounts. Click a folder to list its messages.

Other ways to open files:

• Drag a .dbx file or a whole store folder from Windows Explorer onto the program window.
• Pick a file from the recent files list at the bottom of the File menu.
• Right-click a .dbx or .wab file in Explorer and choose Open with > Advanced DBX Viewer (added by the installer when the Open with option is checked).
• Pass the file name on the command line: AdvancedDbxViewer.exe "D:\Backup\Outlook Express\Folders.dbx".

Several stores at once

Every file you open is added to the folder tree as one more top-level entry. This is the easy way to work with several identities or with backups made in different years. To close one, select it and choose File > Close (Ctrl+F4), or right-click its top-level entry and choose Close. File > Close All closes everything.

Your files are never changed

All files are opened read-only. Advanced DBX Viewer never writes to a .dbx or .wab file, not even when it reads a damaged file or recovers deleted messages, so it is safe to use on evidence and on the only copy of an old mailbox.

2. Layout of the program window

Drag the splitters to resize the panes. Window position, splitters, column widths, column order and sort order are restored the next time you start the program. View > Toolbar and View > Status Bar show or hide those bars.

3. Reading messages

Click a message to show it in the reading pane. Double-click it or press Enter to open it in its own window; with several messages selected, each opens in a window. A message window has its own Message menu, and Esc closes it.

How messages are displayed

• HTML messages are shown by Microsoft Edge WebView2, so newsletters, tables, signatures and inline pictures look the way the sender designed them.
• Plain text messages are shown as text, with clickable web and e-mail addresses; format=flowed text is reflowed.
• uuencoded attachments, which older mail programs put inside the message text, are found and listed as normal attachments.
• Any character set: Unicode, Cyrillic, Greek, Central European, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and others, including old messages with raw 8-bit header lines.
• Newsgroup articles show their newsgroups in the header. Signed messages (S/MIME and PGP/MIME) show their text; the signature is kept when the message is saved as .eml.

Pictures from the Internet and privacy

Pictures that a message loads from the web – including tracking pixels – are blocked. A yellow bar above such a message offers Download pictures for that message. To load them always, turn on View > Download Pictures from the Internet or the Pictures toolbar button. Pictures stored inside the message are always shown.

Scripts never run; pop-ups and downloads are refused. Links open in your default browser, and the real address of a link is shown when you hover over it.

Attached messages

A message forwarded as an attachment appears in the attachment strip. Double-click it to open it in its own window, with its own attachments.

4. Opening and saving attachments

Attachments are listed in a strip between the message header and the text. Right-click an attachment for:

Before opening a program, script or other risky file type (.exe, .js, .vbs, .bat and similar) the program asks for confirmation. To save the attachments of many messages at once, see section 13.

5. Searching for messages

Quick filter

Click the box above the message list or press Ctrl+Shift+F and type. Only messages whose subject or sender contains the text stay in the list. Clear the box to see all messages again.

Find Messages

Choose Edit > Find Messages (Ctrl+E) or click Find. To search one folder and its subfolders, right-click the folder and choose Find in This Folder, or use Edit > Find in Selected Folder.

The results replace the message list, with a Folder column for each message. When several files are searched, the folder starts with the name of the file it came from (for example Folders.dbx (Backup2004)), so identical folder names from different backups can be told apart. The search text may be left empty to search by the conditions alone – for example, every message larger than 2,000 KB. The last search options are remembered.

Highlighted search hits

Messages opened from the results show every occurrence of the search text highlighted in yellow, and the reading pane scrolls to the first one. The subject, From, To and Cc lines and matching attachment names are highlighted as well.

6. Columns, sorting and date groups

Click a column header to sort by it; click again to reverse the order. Right-click the headers, or use View > Columns, to choose the columns: From, Subject, Received, Size, Attachment, To, Cc, Sent, Importance, Flag and Categories. Drag a header to move a column; drag its edge to resize it.

View > Group by Date divides the list into Today, Yesterday, Earlier This Week, Last Week, Earlier This Month, Last Month and Older.

Unread messages are bold. Select several messages with Ctrl+click or Shift+click, or all with Ctrl+A, before saving, exporting or printing.

7. Saving and printing a single message

Select a message and choose File > Save Message As (Ctrl+S). Choose the format in Save as type:

File > Print (Ctrl+P) prints the message with a header block – subject, from, sent, to, cc and attachment names – above the text.

8. Exporting messages and folders

Export saves many messages in one operation. Start it with:

• File > Export Selected Messages (Ctrl+Shift+E), or right-click selected messages – the messages selected in the list.
• File > Export Folder, or right-click a folder – a whole folder, optionally with its subfolders. Select the top-level entry to export the whole store.

Export options

• Include subfolders – also export everything below the selected folder.
• Recreate the folder structure – a folder on disk for every folder of the store.
• File dates from the messages – each exported file gets the sent date as its creation date and the received date as its modification date, so files sort by message date in Explorer.
• Forensic manifest and log – see section 17.

Exports run in the background with a progress bar and a Cancel button.

9. Moving Outlook Express mail to Outlook (PST)

Current versions of Outlook cannot import Outlook Express mail any more. Advanced DBX Viewer writes an Outlook data file itself, without Outlook and without MAPI:

1. Select the top-level entry of the store (or any folder) in the folder tree.
2. Choose File > Export to Outlook PST, or File > Export Folder and pick Outlook personal folders (.pst) as the format.
3. Choose the destination folder and the name of the PST file; leave Include subfolders checked to export the whole tree.
4. Click Export.
5. In Outlook choose File > Open & Export > Open Outlook Data File to open the new file, or Import/Export to copy its contents into your mailbox.

The PST file is a single Unicode file with the folder tree, the messages and their attachments.

10. File name patterns

Exports that create one file per message name the files with a pattern you can edit, for example {date}_{from}_{subject}. Available tokens:

Characters that Windows does not allow in file names are replaced, long names are shortened to stay within the Windows path limit, and duplicate names are numbered.

11. Saving messages as PDF

File > Save Selected as PDF creates one PDF for each selected message. File > Export Folder as PDF, or right-click a folder and choose Export as PDF, does the same for a whole folder and its subfolders. The PDFs are produced by WebView2 and look like the message on screen; pictures from the Internet are included only when Download Pictures from the Internet is on. A progress window shows how far the job is and lets you cancel it.

12. Exporting the message list to CSV

File > Export List to CSV saves the messages of the current list – or only the selected ones – as a CSV file that opens in Excel. It is a quick way to build an inventory of a mailbox for a report or an eDiscovery review. Columns include folder, subject, sender, To / Cc / Bcc, sent and received dates, size, importance, read status, flag, categories, number and names of attachments, Message-ID, and the origin, source file and file offset of each message. The file is UTF-8, so names in any language are kept.

13. Extracting attachments in bulk

Tools > Extract Attachments (also on the message and folder right-click menus) saves the attachments of many messages at once.

• Extract from: the selected messages, all messages in the list, or a folder – optionally including its subfolders.
• File types: for example *.pdf; *.docx; *.xlsx; leave empty for all files.
• Skip pictures that are part of the message text – leaves out logos and inline images.
• Include attached messages – saves forwarded messages as .eml files.
• Create a subfolder for every folder of the store.
• Put the message date in front of the file names, e.g. 2005-10-05 report.pdf.
• File dates from the messages – each file gets the received date of its message.
• Forensic manifest and log – see section 17.

Files with the same name are numbered: report.pdf, report (2).pdf and so on.

14. Outlook Express address books (.wab)

Outlook Express kept its contacts in the Windows Address Book, a .wab file (usually in Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book). Open it with File > Open, or keep it next to the .dbx files – it is then found automatically. A Contacts node appears in the folder tree:

• The list shows contacts and groups with name, e-mail, company and phone numbers; the reading pane shows every field of the selected contact.
• Deleted contacts that are still in the file are found and shown in gray.
• File > Export Contacts, or right-click the list and choose Export Contacts / Export Selected Contacts: a CSV file with Outlook’s column names (for import into Outlook or Gmail), one vCard file with all contacts, or one vCard file per contact.

15. Internet headers and message properties

View > Internet Headers (Ctrl+H) shows the complete header of the message as it was received, including the Received lines that trace its route.

View > Message Properties (Alt+Enter, toolbar Properties) shows three things: the index fields that Outlook Express stored for the message in the .dbx file, every header field (decoded and as stored), and the MIME structure of the message. Double-click a MIME part to see its header and content. Copy puts the list on the clipboard. The Properties window also shows where the message came from: indexed, salvaged from a damaged file, recovered, or attached, with its file offset.

16. Deleted messages and damaged files

Recover deleted messages

When a message is deleted in Outlook Express, its text stays in the .dbx file until the folder is compacted. Tools > Recover Deleted Messages scans every file of the store for such messages, and for messages that are in a file but missing from its index. They are listed in a Recovered Items folder, where you can read, search and export them like any other message.

Folders missing from Folders.dbx

.dbx files that are in the store folder but not listed in Folders.dbx – left behind by a damaged or rebuilt folder list – are shown under Folders not in Folders.dbx.

Damaged files

Outlook Express files often break: they stop working at 2 GB, get cut short when copied, or lose their index. Advanced DBX Viewer reads such files without trying to repair them:

• A folder file with a damaged header or index, or one that was cut off, is searched for message data; the messages found are listed as salvaged. The last message of a cut-off file keeps the part that is still there.
• A damaged Folders.dbx: the folder tree is rebuilt from the folder records found in the file.
• Tools > File Information lists every problem found.

17. Hashes, manifest and export log

For legal and forensic work the program documents what it read and what it wrote.

• Tools > File Information shows details of the open store and the MD5 and SHA-256 of every source file (Folders.dbx, folder files, address books).
• The export and extraction option Forensic manifest and log writes two extra files into the destination folder: a manifest (CSV) with one line per exported message or attachment – origin, source file, file offset, Message-ID, dates, output file and its MD5 and SHA-256 – and a log (text) with the user, computer, time, options, and the size, time and hashes of the source files.
• File dates from the messages keeps the original message dates on the exported files.

18. Toolbar, menus and shortcuts

Toolbar

Keyboard shortcuts

Right-click menus

Messages: Open, Save As, Export Selected Messages, Save as PDF, Export to CSV, Save Attachments, Extract Attachments, Print, Properties, Internet Headers, Select All. Folders: Find in This Folder, Export Folder, Export as PDF, Extract Attachments, Close. Attachments: Open, Save As, Save All Attachments. Contacts: Export Contacts, Export Selected Contacts, Select All.

19. Solving common problems

Where are my Outlook Express files?

On the old PC, look in Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{…}\Microsoft\Outlook Express (Windows XP and 2000). In Outlook Express itself, Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder shows the exact path. On a backup drive, search for Folders.dbx.

HTML messages are shown as plain text

The Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime is missing. It is part of Windows 10 and 11 but can be absent on trimmed systems. Install the Evergreen runtime from Microsoft and restart the program.

Pictures in a newsletter are missing

Internet pictures are blocked for your privacy. Click Download pictures in the yellow bar or turn on View > Download Pictures from the Internet.

A folder shows fewer messages than expected

Run Tools > Recover Deleted Messages and check Tools > File Information for problems in the file. Look under Folders not in Folders.dbx as well.

“The folder is still being loaded”

Exports of the whole list wait until a large folder has finished loading. Wait until the status bar shows the full count and try again.

Exported file names are cut short

Windows limits the length of a path. Export to a folder near the root of the drive, such as C:\Export, or use a shorter file name pattern.

20. Requirements and licensing

The free trial has every feature and runs for 30 days. Each start shows how many days are left: Continue keeps evaluating, Register opens the order page. After you order, an unlocking key file is e-mailed to you; it turns the trial into the full version. Questions about ordering or registration: order@ashkon.com.