Compacting email folders
I bet you didn’t know email messages aren’t really deleted when you hit the delete key. I’m sure you’ve heard all about the files, etc… on your computer that aren’t really deleted. But, this is probably quite a surprise to you. Yes or No?
In quite the same way as files all your email program does is to rewrite a few characters in the file in order to tell itself that a particular email has been “deleted.”
One particular marking in the file indicates that the email has been deleted, so the program shows it in the Trash folder. A different marking shows it has been deleted from the Trash folder. But, it really has not been deleted from the email storage files.
It is actually quite simple to delete your email messages while at the same time making your email files and folders smaller and optimized.
In Outlook Express click File > Folder > Compact All Folders.
For Eudora (to the best of my memory) click Special / Compact Mailboxes.
In Outlook, the process is much more complicated to compact one of its .pst files. The process, from the main Outlook Express window is to select File, Data File Management, select a file, click the Settings button, then click Compact Now button.
- On the main Outlook window, Click on File, then Data File Management.
- This will open a dialog box labelled “Outlook Data Files” — and Inbox, Deleted, Sent etc ARE NOT displayed or choices in this dialog box.
- In my case, the only folder shown has the name “Personal Folders”. I click on it to select it, then click on the Settings button. This opens another dialog box labelled Personal Folders.
- It has two buttons “Change Password…” and “Compact Now”
- Click “Compact Now” — it will take a while.
- Then click OK to close the dialog box.
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