I'm trying to help a colleague who still relies on AOL for their business emails (it's a long story). Recently, they faced a problem logging into AOL Desktop Gold 11 and, after speaking with tech support, it seems their email filing cabinet disappeared after a backup and reinstallation of the client. They were told there was no backup created, and I can't find any .aolsave or .pfc files on the computer. There's a bunch of large SQL files in the App data\user\AOL\db directory, but I don't know if those contain the emails. I've heard there might be automatic backups every month, but I can't find those either. I'm hoping to locate where the offline emails are stored on the local drive since they represent years of saved messages. Any help on recovery or locating these files would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
Reinstalling the software might have removed backup files, unfortunately. I suggest trying a free file recovery program like Recuva. It might help you recover anything that was deleted. Just be careful—if no backups were made, recovery might be a long shot and could cost you if you end up needing professional help.
Those large SQL files you found are likely where the offline data is stored. However, they may not be directly readable by the new installation of the app. You'll probably need to get an SQL editor to access the data inside those files. It sounds tedious, but that's one way to dig into the raw data.
If they're in a certain email configuration (like POP), emails can get deleted from the server once received, but if it hasn’t been more than 7 days, the support team might still be able to pull them up. It's worth contacting them again for clarity.
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