"Louise" wrote in message
news

"VanguardLH" wrote;

"Louise" wrote;
I am having a problem with old newsgroup messages in Outlook
Express 6 on Windows XP SP2.

I have these settings in Tools Options Maintenance set;

[Ticked] Delete read message bodies in newsgroups.
[Ticked] Delete news messages 2 days after being downloaded.

The messages do not go, they hang around forever!!!

Have also tried the Windows repair thing (Start Run sfc
/scannow press ENTER.) as per MS's site and that did nothing,
not even a message, but took a good 10 minutes or so to run.

Nothing seems to have made a difference and yet everything else
works fine. Except one newsgroup (even though I have clicked
'Catch Up') still tries to download *all* the thousands of
messages every now and then!?

You forgot to mention something or perhaps to notice it: Those
options are under the "When compacting ..." group of options.
Well, that means WHEN compaction occurs is WHEN those options are
honored. Did you actually perform a manual compaction? No? Well,
then those options aren't effected until OE happens to get around
to doing the compaction itself which, after WinXP SP-2, will be
every 100 sessions of OE.

I did not notice that it was specifically under the Compacting
section but I have done several manual compactions and that has not
got rid of any of the messages.

How come this never used to be the case with Windows 98? On that,
newsgroup messages (Headers and Message Bodies) were removed after
x number of days using practically the same settings in Options.

So how do you know that the bodies of the posts did not get removed?
After all, if you select them to check then you have told OE to go
retrieve them if the body was missing. You might notice it takes a
bit longer to read the body of a post when it must be retrieved rather
than if it was downloaded before and still there. When you compact,
notice the current size of your message store. After you compact, the
total files size should go down (if any content had been removed by
the compaction).

Just to be sure, are you asking about removing old *newsgroup* posts
or e-mails? Compaction does not apply against e-mails, only against
newsgroups.

Have you actually *read* the messages that you think should have been
deleted by the expiration setting? If you haven't read them then they
haven't been downloaded. Getting the message headers to show a list
of posts is not downloading them (in their entirety). The NNTP client
will get only the headers needed to compile a list of posts. That is
not downloading the posts. When you click on a post to select it then
its body gets downloaded, and it is from THEN that the expiration is
counted (i.e., when you actually *downloaded* the post and not based
on the date of the post). If you are told to empty water from your
cupped hand after it has been there for 1 minute, you would actually
have to put water in your cupped hand to then start the timer. The
water in the bucket doesn't get timed because it hasn't been put in
your cupped hand yet. How long the water has been in the bucket is
irrelevant since the timer starts when the water in bucket has been
put into your *hand*. The bucket got filled 5 days ago. That has
nothing to do with the 1-minute timer of when to empty your cupped
hand AFTER water has been put into it.

As another person put it, "All newsgroup messages are deleted after
they have been on your computer for the specified number of days."
The messages aren't *on* your computer until you download them.
That's not the same thing as a list of those messages. Some users
still use dial-up, and some of those pay by minute, so they use
syncrhonization with the newsgroups configured to download the posts
(and not just the headers) so they can read them while offline. So as
to when the timer starts depends on whether or not the post actually
got downloaded. Remember there is a difference between reading a post
and downloading it. A message in the list is not downloading it, and
you can download the post without reading it. If you use the
Synchronize function, you can configure OE to download the messages (I
just have it download the headers). That means when you sync, OE
downloads either all messages or just new messages from the newsgroups
under the NNTP server that you chose to sync on. You haven't read
those messages yet but you have downloaded them. With the "Delete
after N days after downloaded" option enabled, you have that long to
actually read them before they get wiped (and you'll have to download
them again). Reading a message might download it then or it might
just use the already downloaded copy. Downloading a message doesn't
mean that you are now reading it. You might read it later, say, while
offline. In like fashion, when your e-mail client polls for new
mails, they get downloaded but you haven't actually read them yet.

One option is based on when you *read* a message. Another is based on
when you downloaded it regardless of whether you read it or not. When
the newspaper is delivered to your door, it has been downloaded but
you haven't read it yet. You have N days to then read that newspaper.
If you get to the newspaper before the Nth day, you might rip out the
pages as your read them to progressively make the newspaper smaller.

So you are running into *two* conditions for the "Delete messages N
days after downloaded" option:
- It only applies during compaction.
- The expiration is honored from whenever the message got downloaded
*if* it ever got downloaded. Retrieving headers for messages is not
considered downloading those messages. A message that has been
downloaded may not have been read yet but not reading it doesn't
affect the expiration.

If you use the "?" titlebar icon (click on it) to get help on settings
in a configuration panel (click on the item after clicking on "?"),
you'll see a bit more help on these options describe them as follows

Delete read message bodies in newsgroups
Specifies whether Outlook Express should delete all read newsgroup
messages stored on your computer when you quit Outlook Express.
(Hmm, looks like it isn't dependent on when compaction occurs at all.
Or the help is out of sync with what is inferred by the organization
of settings in the configuration panel.)

Delete news messages N days after they have been downloaded
Specified whether Outlook Express should delete all newsgroup messages
from your computer after they have been on your computer than the
specified number of days.
(They won't be on your computer, or downloaded, unless you have *read*
them.)

Even with "Delete news messages 5 days after they have been
downloaded" enabled in my OE, I've seen posts remain in the message
list that are a month old - but then I never did read those posts
which means they never got downloaded (and I don't use syncrhonization
to download the messages to read them sometime later). I don't know
why the help says the "Delete read message bodies in newsgroups" is
effected on exit from OE since that won't help reduce the sizes of the
database files. Removing content or deleting posts won't remove their
records from the database. That happens only from compaction. The
help doesn't jive with what they show in the config panel.

Instead I use a rule that says to delete messages that are 5 days
*old* based on their datestamp. That is measured by their *date*stamp
(and does not start from the current timestamp, as in 1 day = 24
hours, but instead is based on day boundaries). Some folks figure
that this rule should not be enabled for automatic execution because
you will run it manually to get rid of old messages and under the
presumption that new posts that you retrieve today wouldn't be that
old yet. However, if you don't poll for new messages every day then
some "new" ones might already be older than the 5-day window that I
want. Also, this enabled rule does help to eliminate posts that some
users deliberately mis-date with a future year or month so they can
get their posts at the top of the sorted message list (but not if
these abusers only move their date ahead by less than 5 days). OE
counts both backward AND forward for expiration, so my rule to delete
messages more than 5 days old will also delete messages dated more
than 5 days into the future. For a vast majority of the posts, and
because I poll for new messages at less than 5-day intervals, this
rule doesn't apply against them. If, however, I vacationed for 2 or 3
weeks and came back to poll for new messages, those over 5 days old
still get their headers retrieved but then this rule gets rid of them
so I don't see messages over that old. Also, if I visit a new
newsgroup, and because I don't use the option to limit the number of
headers retrieved to 300 or 1000 (because very busy newsgroups could
have more than that many posts inside my 5-day window), I end up
retrieving thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of headers but the
rule gets rid of those over 5 days old since I really don't want to
bother with messages older than that. I also don't want to keep using
the "Tools - Get Next n Messages" menu to keep filling up the message
list to account for the last 5 days in a really busy newsgroup that
has several hundred posts each day; i.e., I don't want to keep pumping
the handle to fill in my 5-day window with repeated use of "Get Next n
Messages". By keeping my expiration rule enabled: future-dated posts
(beyond 5 days) are eliminated, I fill up the 5-day window but not
beyond that when visiting new newsgroups, and I only get a recent
5-day supply of new posts after returning to a newsgroup after an
extended absence.

I don't really want to keep a list of posts over 5 days just because I
never *downloaded* them (by viewing their body). There are lots of
posts that I will choose not to read and hence not downloaded but I
don't want them lingering around even in the list beyond my 5-day
window. So every few days, I run my rule manually. Leaving the rule
enabled has some other nice side effects as noted above.

Just remember that reading and downloading posts is not the same
thing.
- You might download a post today but not read it until a month later.
- You might download a post, especially when using synchronization,
and never bother to read it.
- You might read a post which makes it download now.