Compacting your folders is the best you can do. Can they still be recovered?
Possibly using a tool that checks the HDD for fragmented messages.

The CIA, FBI or Homeland Security could certainly recover enough to find
what they needed to know.

The only way to be sure is to remove the hard drive and run a D8 Cat over it
a few times.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Irene" wrote in message
...
I understand that even though I have deleted my email messages from the
folders they still exist on the database. How do I permanently delete all
email from the database?
--
Irene