Many people have commented on this thread that I started.
Most comments have been useful and/or interesting. They have suggested 
alternatives to OE or O, ways to extract messages from OE (usually 
with some losses along the way)(but in some cases also some gains), 
ways to read OE format files, alternatives of sorts to exporting from 
OE or O etc. All good stuff.

But most, while useful, seemed to miss the original point (which 
admittedly hardly needs emphasising :-) )(I'm largely preaching to 
those who have already left the choir here) that Microsoft, as a 
marketing decision, have with Outlook (*NOT* Outlook Express) not only 
made a closed format program but have made it really really hard for 
people who buy a premium version to use it in a normal situation for 
normal disaster recovery action when disaster strikes. In the area 
that I was concerned with the free Outlook Express performs infinitely 
better than the for money version of Outlook which was supplied with 
the premium version of Office that I was forced to be working with 
because that was what was on the client's machine.

Interestingly, in this case I have not noticed anyone trying to defend 
Microsoft's indefensible practices in this area - not even the 
apologist who for some reason seems to delight in rubbishing other 
people but defending every aspect of Microsoft's endeavours. Maybe on 
this matter we have finally reached agreement.

FWIW, for various reasons I still use OE (but never O) myself and am 
in most areas happy enough with the capabilities and results, but as 
it has problems with active mail stores over about 4 GB (or maybe it's 
the 130,000 odd messages)  [ :-) ] that too may change.



        Russell


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