urlee, I know what you mean about dialup. I just got high speed in February. I did find the answer to my problem with OE. Just on the off chance something might show up I checked my e-mail settings at my server for my e-mail. When I clicked the button to make changes it showed I had nine letters (shown as dots) in my password, but I knew it should have only 8. I deleted what was there and re-entered my password and saved it. I then went to OE and low and behold it worked. I have no explanation how the password could have gotten changed since it has worked since Feb. when I got high speed and they helped me set up OE as my e-mail. I don't know what my friend did to give me a little more speed, but I don't think he would have been in my server website. Go figure? I am just glad I found it, and it is working. Jane PS: No one is touching my settings or whatever again.

I'm sorry I think this is user set up error here. After the creation of a message rule did you select the "Apply Now" button? Did you select all the "OK" buttons when exiting? I ask as I have been remiss in clicking all the necessary buttons when building a rule, and it has failed. In your frustration to get the message rule option to work, did you create multiple entries for the same rule? If so, remove all but one. In a last ditch effort you could remove all the message rules and start from the beginning. DA

I have never heard of an ISP that told you what to use as your email address. Are you talking about your ISP when you say your provider or something else? When I set up our comcast I set up an email address similar to what you are saying with some initals and part of the name. I never use it but set it up just in case I should need one and to get any correspondence from comcast should they email me. I later decided to tie that email account to my ebay account and ebay came back and said that email address was already in use by someone. HUMMM well how can that be? So I created a different one at comcast and used it. Fast forward to last week when just for the heck of it I decided to go check on those comcast addys to see if there was any mail. Well that first one had a ton of spam in it and several emails from someone with the same initals/name and it looks like he also has that same email address. It has not been an issue for me since I just do not use that address but I was able to open all those emails of his and they were business related and some were legal. I am sure he would not be happy about that I know I would not be happy. I have no idea how comcast let that happen, each email address should be unique and never be allowed once someone has locked it in. the other 2nd comcast one I set up and ended up tieing to my ebay had zero spam and only email from ebay in it. very weird and sounds like maybe something very similar is happening in your case. If so the ISP should be able to check those 2 accounts and see why exactly that is happening. Definitely check your full headers and get all the routing info and let them have that info so they can sort it out. you may have to ask how to show full headers each email client is different, I have not used outlook express in ages.

gmom, Here is the link that is most likely to save your day: www.OEHelp.com/OETips Scroll down to the red 'Update'. Have a read, but before you do anything else, download the free programme Outlook Express Quick Backup (don't worry about the command line instructions because you never use them - you just push the buttons). Before you run OE Quick Backup create a new Backup Folder (preferably on another drive) e.g. 'Current'. Run OE Quick Backup and select the 'Current' folder then click 'Backup All'. Once your latest data is safely backed up in 'Current' create a couple more folders e.g. 'Old 2008' and 'Old 2007'. This is because, if things work o.k., you are likely to end up with several .dbx files with the same name and you need to save them in different places - as explained in the next paragraph. So, to recover e.g. an old "Sent" email folder copy sent.bak and save it to your current identity as sent1.dbx and then backup that to "Old 2008". A quick word about .bak files - when Widows saves a later version of any file with the same name as the original one it changes the extension of the original file to .bak e.g. text.txt to text.bak and program.exe to program.bak. This gives you only one chance to 'easily' recover your data because if you save again using the same name then the first .bak file is overwritten - this is windows way of preventing your hard drive from becoming full with obsolete files. N.B. My Windows theory might not be 100% correct (I am both old and self-taught!) but the general principles are about right and it could save you from corrupting anything that you do manage to recover. Good luck. Colin Here is a link that might be useful: Outlook Express Help Main Index