When you delete a message from an Outlook Express folder, it is not actually deleted, but only marked as deleted. Such a message, marked as deleted, stays in the Outlook Express folder until a new message is written to the location it occupies or until the user compacts the folder. Nevertheless, part of information is lost permanently when you delete an Outlook Express message. That is why it is often impossible to recover files attached to e-mail message since they have a complicated format.

To recover recently deleted messages, do the following:

• Click the "Recently deleted" tab (if it's not active yet) to switch to the mode of recovering recently or accidentally deleted messages.
• Select the necessary Outlook Express folder in the left part of the window. The program will start to search for deleted messages. After the search is over, the program will display the list of the found messages. Right-click the message list and select the messages you would like to recover. Click the "Save recovered messages" button in the toolbar. Each message will be saved as a file with the EML extension. To open such a file, double-click it. You may fail to open some files with a double click. You can try to open them with the help of a text editor to extract at least some useful information (e.g. the sender's address).