Well, looks like you beat me to the punch, Htlebmn. Yes, I discovered ePreserver a few days ago while researching this issue and will be giving it a try. What the heck, for $24.95 it's worth a shot and sure beats the alternatives at this point.

For those who are not familiar with the ePreserver software, it migrates AOL PFC emails and other saved items to Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.

Since I've never used Outlook or Outlook Express, I first need to set up an email account with one of these applications. Given that Outlook Express comes free with Windows and I currently do not have Outlook found in the Microsoft Office Suite on my computer, I guess it will be Outlook Express for me.

Yeah, ePreserver seems to be the least expensive alternative at this point. If it doesn't work, I can always open the wallet for the ePreserver Recovery program for $149.00 or the EMD forensics software from Hotpepperinc.com that I mentioned a few posts ago.

Hello! I too am having trouble with emails getting lost or in my case "not saved" on my AOL email account. I have my setting such that all emails read should save to my incoming/saved folder. Lately around the middle of May, I found that SOME of my emails had gone missing. I wondered if it was because I had signed onto my AOL email account via the internet. Usually when I read my AOL email via the web, I would "keep as new" any emails I wanted to re-read(thus save on my PC). Tonight I read an email - checked my incoming/saved folder and it wasn't there. So I manually tried saving it to my incoming/saved folder and it still didn't show up. Anyone with help - please POST! Thanks, Candice

Well, re-logged back onto AOL, read a NEW email from my PC AOL and IT didn't save. The previous email I had read and manually saved did show up in my incoming/saved folder. I'm going to log out of AOL, log back in and see if my just read email is saved. If not, then I'm going to manually save it, check again. If not saved, I'm going to log out of AOL, log back in and check my incoming/saved folder for the 2nd manually saved email. Trying to see a pattern or possibly just waste my TIME!

Well - Still having trouble with email saving to my AOL incoming/saved folder. I did notice this, that when I get the "loading complete" message when I open/read an email, the email gets saved to my incoming/saved folder. Don't know what THAT means. I think there's a problem of some kind. I don't know what it is, though.

I HAVE THE ANSWER !!!!
Just did it myself right now and it worked. Everything is back. And its easy too.

On the Windows taskbar next to the clock, click the AOL icon, then click One-click Fixes.
On the AOL One-click Fixes page, next to Categories:, click the General PC link. In the General PC section, next to Turn on Windows Automatic Update, click the Fix It For Me button.. Click the Continue button. Click the Done button.
then
you must be offline for just this step.To restore your Saved on My PC (Filing Cabinet) folder using all versions of AOL® 9.0: Above the AOL® toolbar, click the Mail menu, then click Mail Settings. In the Mail Settings window, click the Manage Saved Mail button, then click Restore. In the Restore Your Personal Storage window, click the Yes button. Click the Save button.

To restore the contents of your Filing Cabinet using AOL® 6.0, AOL® 7.0, or AOL® 8.0:
Above the AOL® toolbar, click the File menu, then click Filing Cabinet. In the Filing Cabinet window, click the Manage button, then click Restore. In the Restore Your Personal Storage window, click the Yes button. Click the X in the upper right corner to close the Filing Cabinet window.

Good luck to all and thank God my files are back...........

Renee

check back at this site i have posted what i did to fix problem and its easy and it WORKS.

Hi Everyone,
I have also lost all my email saved to my filing cabinet. I had everything stored, receipts of things that I had bought on Ebay, all my emails from university that came from my associate lecturer with my assignment scores and everything (I am a mature student studying law). First of all I thought that it might be someone hacking into my computer, as this has been done to me before when I first started using aol, where the hacker managed to get in and transfer my files. I was sitting at the computer one evening and I could hear this voice saying twice "your files are being transferred", I immediately rang technical support at aol and they were able to tell me "he's not online now", and I was advised to change my password which I did. Maybe it's not a hacker this time, but who knows? any emails which are imortant (my university mail and my online buying info) in the future I will print off and delete and not save them at all. All the email addresses from my fellow students are also gone. Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks,
irish.

Before spending any money, try this it worked for me after my computer crashed. I located the organize file in my AOL directory. I found the huge file named as my screenname that I wanted to restore with no extension attached under an earlier version of AOL. If you right click on properties, you will be able to determine if this is the one, mine was 8 megs so I knew the info was there. I right clicked then copied the file which produced a file named copy of screenname. I then drug that file out onto my desktop. I opened up the newly installed folder for the new version of AOL and found the screenname file and renamed it as screennamea. I just added a to it. I then drug the copied file off my desktop into that folder, renamed it as just the screename and closed the files. When I went to start up AOL, fingers crossed. I accessed my PFC file cabinet and YES! all my old saved emails were there as were my favorite places.
I hope this makes sense.
Good luck!

It's so nice to know I'm not alone! LOTS of frustration the past few days when I discovered all my business and personal emails that I thought were safely stored in my PFC were gone! I did a couple of AOL Quick fixes last week but they (AOL) have assured me this would not change anything. However, I have spoken with four different techs in the space of 2 days and they all had different opinions. The last 2 definitely told me that the PFC and all old emails were gone. These emails went back about 7 years.

On my own, after following all the steps given to me by various techs at AOL, I discovered that my emails were there in a back up file but were mostly encrypted. Any suggestions on how to translate these back to their original form? I stumbled upon them by accident. I went into the C_AOLonline9.0 and instead of going into Organize, I noticed that the backup file for my sign on name was large. Voila! There they were but I could only read a small amount of them. I had to open them in WordPad as someone suggested to read anything. I got a message of File Too Large to Open when I tried to open it in AOL.

I noticed that in the encrypted emails the message "this file was created on another version of AOL and cannot be opened....." or something like that.

I hope that's enough info. What is up with AOL? Why do these emails disappear? Does anyone know?

And anything that anyone has to offere would be greatly appreciated. I am looking for a guru who can somehow tell me what to do.

Thanks so much.

califiorniatogo

It's me again. I'm hoping that someone out there is still following these threads. Here is the strange thing about my lost pfc in AOL---It still exists for my other screen names. It is only missing for my main screen name. The file exists--I found it. It is in some binary language along with a few phrases that I can recognize.

When I try to open it in AOL, I get the message that this file was saved by a newer version and cannot be displayed - or -- that this file is too large.

Any suggestions as to how to successfully extract this file and bring it back to readable form would be greatly appreciated. I have tried almost all of the methods posted previously on this thread.

Any help out there????

californiatogo