Sorry, I was (and am) apparently totally confused about the current
implementation.

I'm still confused about what happens after the 100th time OE closes. The
insideoe article you point me to says in part "OE now waits until you open
and close the program 100 times. After that 100th time OE begins to
compact..." This sounds to me as if it's going to compact whether I think
it's a good time to do that or not. Your message says "...Now you will get a
prompt to compact after 100 OE closings, which you should do." Which is it?
Do I get the opportunity to say "NO, I don;t want to compact at this time",
or does OE go ahead and do it without giving me an option to say NO? I'm not
trying to split hairs, but I think this is the crux of the issue for me. On
the one hand, I can't control whether compaction happens at more-or-less
random times (the 100th open/close); on the other hand, I can just say NO
whenever asked, if it's not a good time to compact. I do not recall ever
being prompted to go/nogo compaction and that's why it seems plausible to me
that it's going to go ahead and compact the 100th time, whether I want it to
or not, without my ever realizing it.

If I can expect that OE will be compacting at some time, without my
realizing it, then I would like to be able to run something more-or-less
automatically to keep that from happening, hence my question about a program
for resetting the counter to zero at OE startup.

I'm also not totally secure in what is being said about the need for
compaction. Seems there are two schools of thought: 1) you need to compact
often because it improves performance and conserves disk space; 2) you need
to compact often because OE has certain limitations which will cause
messages, even entire folders, to be lost if you don't compact often enough.
I now have a feeling that both are true, but I had been working under the
impression that the only real downside to not compacting was #1 (performance
and disk space). Taking a performance and disk space hit to avoid losing
messages after an automatic compaction had been terminated before completion
seemed like a no-brainer.

Regarding "Replace the Compact Prompt:" -- I don't see anything in my
Registry that sounds like it has anything to do with the Compact Prompt for
any of the three userids that I have defined. I see "HTML Plain warning, Send
Mail Warning, Saved in Saved Items". So I guess I'll see the prompt after the
next 100th open/close of OE.

Thank you very much for your help. I apologize for being so dense.

Phil


"Bruce Hagen" wrote:

> 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
>
>