Dear Sharon, Thank you so very much for your reply. I feel dreadful that you are helping me whilst you are on holiday. At the same time I am very, very grateful that you care as much as you do about helping us on this list. I followed your instructions but failed in following the complete path that you provided. My Computer > C:\> documents and settings > All users > Everything went well until the next part (Application Data) This is nowhere to be found on my computer. Not even using the search facility. I tried pasting the folder from my desktop into what I thought was the correct organise folder but it does not seem to have worked. No matter how I tried I could not complete the steps of your instructions. So I tried Norton Go Back but that would not go back far enough. Then I tried System Restore with the same result. What galls me is that it turns out the fault was on the telephone line and the phone company (BT) cannot come out until the 15th June. AOL are kindly posting a new Broadband modem out to me just in case that was at fault. So I didn't need to uninstall and reinstall AOL after all. Grrrrrr....... The good news is that I had saved a back up copy of my favourites on my computer so I have been able to restore those at least. It is just my e-mails now that I would like to recover if that were possible. If not, it is not a disaster as I keep the most important ones in a journal which I have got backed up on my external hard drive. I also put them into a folder than I can open in Outlook express in readiness for when I have to leave AOL in three months time. Thank you very much indeed for all the help you give to myself and to all of us on this list. You are truly a star and a most helpful and unselfish lady. Thank a million. I hope that you have a wonderful vacation. Please don't bother about this little problem of mine until you are home again and well rested. Thanks a lot. Jean McCarthy nee Moore http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jeanmccarthy36/