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Hi all thanks for all your suggestions, I have been waiting to talk to my brother who understands about this. Thanks for the youtube clip Rov, it was most useful. I tried to do everything it suggested on there and followed it through, but when I copy and pasted the file in my In box folder I couldn't open the contents it just kept downloading everything and never stopped .............. for hours so in the end I cancelled.
In answer to your other questions I use OE6 in Windows XP, and also Firefox on this site. I looked in the deleted box but the in box emails are not there, also looked in recycle bin - not there and also did a System Restore back to yesterday - still nothing. So I'm scared I'm doing more harm than good, my bruv says I need a complete system overhaul possibly with loading Windows back up again to start from scratch as it doesn't seem to have been doing updates, and has always been a bit dodgy.
I'm not clever enough to sort on my own, but that video was great, thanks. Will now leave it until my brother can visit as its only the incoming emails which have disappeared, (they are coming through from 2pm just a whole years disappeared) think its because it keeps saying they need to be compressed and I always hit "cancel" - so maybe, just maybe I hit ok when another folder was open and minimised - I know this can accidentally delete them. Ta muchly!