I thought I would empty my sent folder. It had lots of old emails within. As I was emptying it, I discovered that somewhere along the line.....the emails were getting the wrong date. Some were dated as far forward as September 2010. The date problem at some point got corrected......so the July 2010 files were being placed before the Sept. and Aug emails.....thus being hidden (to me). To make a long story short.....the problem seem to be resolved. Larry

Update: I just called her on the phone. She does not use Outlook. She uses something like ATT Yahoo for her email. When she goes into Programs....and tries to open Outlook Express, she gets some message that mentions there is an error....and goes on to talk about a POP server....and other things way over my head. I suggested that she call her provider for some help. It was over my head. I thank you raven and Bob for your messages. Larry

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.

Just a quick update to anyone who may (or may not!) be interested in my original problem... After literally weeks of frustrating searches, futile attempts and dead-ends, I wiped Outlook Express from my computer and downloaded Thunderbird...it's a real gem! I did lose my old address book (but luckily I had a replica within Hotmail), but DID keep all sent/deleted/saved messages...can easily rebuild address book as people email me...messages to my old OE address still arrive at new Thunderbird one, so I'm a very happy chappy! Regards to all, Shax