I've been going through this for 6+ hours now. What it appears happened was the local mail file had become corrupt and what's even worse is it looks like my backup copy was also corrupt. For a week or so the "Mail waiting to be sent" folder was empty but the old mail and sent mail was fine. So I followed the instructions to "Restore" the mail file (which is a bit over 1 gig...). The restore ran for about 45 seconds and popped up a error message and all three folders disappeared. I restarted AOL and get a "File cannot be opened. AOL will attempt to restore the file." but it doesn't do anything and the "Mail on my PC" folder group was grayed out. So I renamed the file from my screen name to my screen name .old and AOL started up but of course the folders were empty.

I purchased the ePreserver program for $25 and ran it only to have it tell me the file was corrupt and I need to buy ePreserver Recovery (for $150....ugh). So I went back to their site and downloaded the demo of the recovery program just to see if it would work and it gave a bunch of error messages then said it found 35 email, which is no where close to the 1000+ I had in there. Maybe the software will work for you guys but it seems my mail file is too far gone. I've requested a refund from the company since the software is of no use to me, hopefully they will return the $25 without a huge hassle.

So for future reference c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\c_americaonline_xx\organize\YourScreenName is the file with your offline mail.....make a backup if you haven't recently. Or just backup the entire folder and copy it back when there is a problem or your moving computers. Or even better stop using AOL.

-Allan

the problem is that AOL integrates with Outlook and does not throw the switch to leave the messages on the server. The messages are downloaded to Outlook and removed from AOL. The real question is how do you put them back in AOL from Outlook?

I was sitting at my computer and watched mine disappear right before my very eyes. Since I don't subscribe to AOL I could not locate a number or file that could help me. I have some valueable things saved that I needed to use and they are all gone. I don't sdave them to my laptop but to the bdesktop which is not set up since I am in the middle of moving. I can only hope they might still be on there! At least some of them. Anyone figure out how to find them yet? I would be very grateful.

Help! I've spent hours on this so far. I have both AOL 9.1 and 9.5 installed currently. I upgraded to 9.5 because 9.1 was corrupted, was giving garbled pages on google searches. I backed up my PFC cabinet (I save files on my PC, not on AOL server). When I logged in to 9.5, I couldn't see the folders, of which I have many. I went through several methods of retrieving them. The one where you go into the Data Folder and try to paste the screen name (with no extension after the file name) into the Organize folder. I get this error message: "Cannot copy (screen name), it is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again." But I have no other program open. Also tried the method of going offline and clicking on Mail - Mail Settings - Managed Saved Mail - Restore, which does not work either. I know the file is there, it is 513mb. I've tried accessing it in 9.5, and re-installed 9.1 and cannot access it there either. Why in the world must we buy another program like epreserver to access these files? (I know, I really need to move on from AOL) Or do I have a different problem, as in the WIndows error message I got? thanks to anyone who can cure this headache.

i had this problem a few years ago and discovered that it's to do with aol's server. when you download an email etc it stays on their server and every once in a while they decide to clear down their server files and lo behold, everyone loses their email files. I was furious at this and lost important emails. As a result of this I moved to another service provider and will never use AOL again!!

My name is Jack a couple of days ago almost 1000 of my aol email completely dissapeared. I do not remember deleating them. There are a lot of these e mail that I need. I did not back any of these. I have a Dell Desktop Espiron 3000.
I need assistance in retrieving these emails.

How can I recover my new e-mail?

Has anyone figured out a solution to this problem as yet, I am currently having the same problem. I had lost many important mails finally I decided that the best way is to switch to another service providers.