You're messages seem to be on the large size. I would continue to compact at
least once a day, but you can compact as often as you want. It doesn't harm
anything.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Sandy J" wrote in message
...
Some are 300 to 400 kb stationery from various stationery newsgroups,
others
are anywhere from 100 to 500 kb psp tubes... When the delete folder gets
so
full that I have to scroll down to see all the messages I've deleted then
I
empty the send folder then the delete folder and then compact all
folders.... It usually only takes about 5 seconds or so...
Is
it harmful to compact so often?

Sandy

"Bruce Hagen" wrote in message
...
Yes, you are lucky you have never lost messages. OE used to show you the
Compact prompt after 100 closings, but not after the latest patches, it
resets the registry count to zero even if you manually compact. (Another
plus).

Are these messages you delete large? I delete about 100 entire newsgroup
threads each day and I only compact twice a week. These are all text
though
and not very large. It's going against all advice I have ever given, but
you
may not need to compact that often. If it takes less than 15 seconds, you
can wait longer.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Sandy J" wrote in message
...
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