Folders were gone in Outlook Express

Happened, most likely irreparable - vanished important correspondence on commercial issues .
At some point Outlook Express 5 offered the option "compress" files, and we with the colleague pressed the button to squeeze files. As a result folders were gone in Outlook with all contents in whole or in part. Hardly, but found a place where Outlook archives contents. all missing dbx. folder were found. But! Part of folders files - empty, to my horror. At the same time, they "weigh" all my KB and MB. That is under an icon of the file "weight" is specified, but when opening they empty! Other files can be opened freely. As experiment tried to send the empty folder from one e-mail address on another. An empty folder for a long time was loaded, that is, it means that "weight" is and the content is not lost. But why is it empty? Hell some. Folder is empty or partially empty. What to do? Is there a way to restore the lost correspondence? How?
Looked on the Internet, did not find anything useful.
I'm on the verge of despair. Is there a way out?