Are you referring to email messages or news posts?

News posts are not deleted...they are marked as 'read'. You can set your
newsreader to not display posts that you have already read. I believe
read posts effectively disappear when you compact your folders.

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Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

*Anna* wrote:
For some reason, OE won't allow me to delete any read messages.
Never had this problem before and I haven't made any changes to OE.
I have compacted all folders and still can't delete read messages.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
*Anna*