Thanks for your prompt reply Bruce,

I should have also have said that I use OE a lot and compact my folders
regularly at least 3 or more times daily since I have so many messages
coming in and am always sending and deleting messages.... But I do wonder
why I never get that message after 100 closings? I must have opened and
closed many more times than that.

It's just that it was a surprise to find those files in my recycle bin and
not knowing why they suddenly started appearing there that I began to
research bak files and what they are. I guess I've been lucky, I've never
lost a file.
:-))
Sandy

"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
No. Hardly a day goes by without someone posting that OE compacted and now
their messages are gone. And did they have them backed up? Of course not.
Now they have to purchase a retrieval tool, spend possibly hours, and still
may not get all the messages back.

Finally, MS decided to *hold people's hands* and do the backup for them.
IMHO, one of the good *big brother* things they have done.

This article explains why messages may be lost:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918069/en-us

And this explains the patch.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

You could use a program like Disk Clean to empty the Recycle Bin, and other
things, at startup, but that defeats the purpose of this patch.

Be greatful for small blessings.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Sandy J" wrote in message
...
After the latest updates I find that when I compact files that the backup
files from all my OE folders are sent to the recycle bin... I'm wondering
if there is a way to just have them deleted without going to the recycle
bin?

Sandy