Outlook Express Database

File Format
Name	Outlook Express Database
Ontology	Electronic File Formats E-Mail, newsgroups, and forums Outlook Express Database
Extension(s)	.dbx
PRONOM	fmt/838, fmt/839

An Outlook Express Database (DBX) is used by Microsoft Outlook Express (distinct from Outlook) to store e-mail messages and folders.

File identification

Files begin with hex bytes CF AD 12 FE.

This is followed by a class ID (CLSID) depending on whether the file contains messages or folders:

• Message Database: 6F74FDC5-E366-11d1-9A4E-00C04FA309D4
• Folder Database: 6F74FDC6-E366-11d1-9A4E-00C04FA309D4
• Offline Database: 26FE9D30-1A8F-11D2-AABF-006097D474C4

Links

• Forensic Wiki page
• Downloadable file format info (archived)
• Outlook to Unix mail converter (supports DBX via library libdbx among other Microsoft mail-related formats). Contains FILE-FORMAT for Outlook Express 5.0 DBX files
• DBX to PST converter
• undbx tool to extract, recover and undelete e-mail messages from Outlook Express .dbx files.