And at work where they have instituted a new policy that .pst files should
not be over 250 mb, I deleted about a gig of items and went to lunch (60
minutes) and when I came back, it took another 5 to complete.

--�
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, William Lefkovics [MVP] asked:

| I've seen it take longer than 10 minutes.
|
| Did the file size change in Windows Explorer?
|
| "Jon Jermey" wrote in message
| u...
|| I recently deleted a lot of old messages from Outlook XP. Afterwards
|| I called up the Data File Management settings and said 'Compact
|| Now'. The 'Compacting' dialog box came up... and stayed... and
|| stayed... After ten minutes I hit 'Cancel' and it closed without any
|| ill effects. How long should it take to compact the file (about
|| 200Mb prior to being tidied up)? Is it possible for compacting to
|| 'hang'?
||
|| Jon.