Compacting your folders periodically is a must to keep OE
functioning well and at some point, you may lose all your saved messages if
you don't.

With SP2, automatic background compacting was removed due to
problems it caused. Now you will get a prompt to compact after 100
OE closings, which you should do. See this for more information:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

To keep things running smooth, and for faster compacting:

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually
become corrupt and you may lose mail. Create your own user
defined folders for storing mail and move your mail to them.
Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created folders
under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

And this is a very good option:

Steve Cochran has added a button in his new version of OE Tool
that will not only Compact All Folders, but at the same time,
resets the "Compact Check Count" to zero whenever you compact
manually. You will see the prompt again if you do not compact
before 100 closings.

http://www.oehelp.com/OETool/

It is still advised to check Work Offline before you compact.

If the folders are being compacted automatically, you must have checked Do
not show me this again for the prompt to compact after 100 closings of OE.
The first thing you have to do is put the prompt back, because removing it
doesn't stop compacting, you just don't know it is happening now and if you
do something such as turning off the computer while compacting is in
progress, you will wipe out messages.

Replace the Compact Prompt:

Go to: Start>Run>Regedit>Enter and follow this path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{GUID}\Software\Micro soft\Outlook
Express\5.0\Don't Show Dialogs.

In the right pane right click on the appropriate entry and choose Delete.

Compacting your folders periodically is a must to keep OE
functioning well and at some point, you may lose all your saved messages if
you don't.

With SP2, automatic background compacting was removed due to
problems it caused. Now you will get a prompt to compact after 100
OE closings, which you should do. See this for more information:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

To keep things running smooth, and for faster compacting:

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually
become corrupt and you may lose mail. Create your own user
defined folders for storing mail and move your mail to them.
Empty Deleted Items folder regularly. Keep user created folders
under 100MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

And this is a very good option:

Steve Cochran has added a button in his new version of OE Tool
that will not only Compact All Folders, but at the same time,
resets the "Compact Check Count" to zero whenever you compact
manually. You will see the prompt again if you do not compact
before 100 closings.

http://www.oehelp.com/OETool/

It is still advised to check Work Offline before you compact.

Please read:

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/...orruption.mspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"pwrichcreek" <pwrichcreek@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:80F94A1E-210E-4B6F-94BC-E995DAF0A339@microsoft.com...
> I've read quite a few of the threads that discuss compaction and it seems
> to
> me the bottom line is that compaction can be hazardous to the health of
> your
> OE folders. Suppose that you had complete control over compacting; what is
> the worst that could happen if you almost NEVER compacted?
>
> It seems to me that if you could reset the howManyTimesHasOEBeenClosed
> counter to zero, each time you started OE, automatic compaction would
> never
> occur. Then, when you observed whatever bad thing(s) starts to creep in
> due
> to not compacting, you could manually compact in a controlled environment,
> such as a modified SAFE mode.
>
> Is the howManyTimesHasOEBeenClosed counter kept in the Registry? Would it
> be
> difficult to write a program that could be run each time Windows starts
> that
> would simply reset the count to 0, or even better when OE starts up. I
> believe I read that OEtool resets the counter, but only after doing a
> manual
> compaction. What I'm suggesting is something that: does the reset without
> any
> manual intervention, that is, could be run at Windows (or OE) startup;
> and,
> does not require compacting. An alternative might be a program that simply
> displays the value of the counter that could run each time you start
> Windows
> (or OE). This would give you the opportunity to run a manual compaction
> when
> the counter started to approach the automatic trigger value (100?).
>
> TIA for your comments,
>
> Phil