General OE Caveats:

- Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.

- Empty Deleted Items folder daily.

- Frequently perform a manual compact of all OE folders while "working
offline"...especially before backing up data! More at
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm

- Do not cancel Automatic Compacting, should it occur, and do not attempt to
close OE via Task Manager or shutdown your machine if Automatic Compacting
is taking place.

- Disable email scanning by your anti-virus application. It can cause
corruption (i.e., loss of messages) and provides no additional protection:

Why you don't need your anti-virus to scan your email
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tuto...ning/index.htm

--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Client - since 2002
www.banthecheck.com


Walter R. wrote:
At the end of each month I make an image of my system. (Acronis)

In preparation, I get rid of temp files and other unneeded stuff that has
accumulated during the month.

I then clean out the Outlook express files in Options Maintenance.

I then clean up the files in Outlook Express, leaving only one month of
messages: Deleted files, Inbox and Sent items

However, when in look in the OE folder in Doc. & Settings, all the dbx
folders that I cleaned up still show many MB of messages. E.g. Deleted
files
still shows 37 MB of deleted messages although the folder in Outlook
Express
is empty. These files keep getting larger and thus increase the size of my
images.

How can I clean up all of the content of the dbx files? I know, I could
dispose of the deleted files by deleting the dbx folder. OE will then make
a
new deleted folder when I open up OE the next time. But, I do not want to
delete the Inbox folder or the Sent Items Folder because I lose all recent
messages.

?