Cannot Delete Messages From Outlook Express

Sometimes you might find that you cannot move a message to the Deleted Items folder either by dragging and dropping it or by highlighting it and pressing the delete button on your keyboard. This is problem is caused by a corruption of the Deleted Items folder.
You will probably also find that you cannot delete the messages that are currently in the Deleted Items folder either, and this is again due to corruption of the Deleted items folder.

This is an easy one to resolve because you can get Outlook Express to create a new Deleted Items folder for you.
To do this though you will need to delete the Deleted Items folder first, but you cannot do that while Outlook Express or any email messages are open.
Before you close all Outlook Express just make sure that any messages in the Deleted Items folder are no longer wanted because you will not be able to get these back once you delete the Deleted items folder. I know that might seem strange but I have actually gone to permanently delete the messages in my deleted items folder and then realised there was the odd message in there that I had a change of mind about and decided to archive instead of delete.



Once you are sure that there is nothing worth saving, close Outlook Express. Now locate the Deleted items.dbx file
You can do a search of your hard drive for this or you can try and locate it manually. A typical location for it is:
C:Documents and SettingsYOURPROFILENAME**Local SettingsApplication DataIdentities{38947742-DZ29-4823-G696-267921E62DT1}MicrosoftOutlook Express

Note: YOURPROFILENAME** is where you will find your own name that you use to login to your computer and, {38947742-DZ29-4823-G696-267921E62DT1} is the a unique number for your identity so obviously it wont' be the same as this number here, I just used it as an example.

When you find the Deleted items.dbx file delete it just like you would any other file.


Now re-open Outlook Express. You will see a Deleted items folder. This is because Outlook Express will automatically create a new Deleted Items folder if it cannot locate an existing folder of that name. There, I told you Outlook will create it for you.
Now you have a shiny new Deleted items file you can delete those messages you no longer want.