Performing Maintenance in Outlook Express

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Mail and news messages can quickly accumulate and consume large amounts of disk storage space. The maintenance tab on the Outlook Express Options dialog box lets you set options to regain some of that storage space.

Reducing Wasted Disk Space

Every time Outlook Express adds a new message to a mail folder, it expands the size of the folder to make space for it. However, it doesn't automatically reduce the size of a folder if you delete a message. Therefore, your folders will eventually take up more disk space than necessary. To reclaim wasted space:

1. Open any mail folder.
2. Choose Folder from the File menu and Compact from the submenu. Or choose Compact All Folders to reduce the wasted space in all of your folders.

You can also eliminate wasted space in your news folders:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu, and click the Maintenance tab.
2. Click Clean Up Now.
3. Click Compact to eliminate wasted space in news folders, or click Remove Messages to delete the local copies of news messages, leaving only the headers in place. (If you want to see the message bodies again, you can download a new copy from the server later.) Or click Delete to remove all messages and headers.

Backing Up Your Message Store

Outlook Express doesn't include a command for backing up messages. You can simply include your message files in your normal file backup routine, however. Each Outlook Express folder is stored in a separate file with the extension .dbx. To find out where these files are stored, choose Options from the Tools menu and click the Maintenance tab. Then click Store Folder. If the path to the folder is too long to see, click on the path and press the keyboard's End key to scroll to the end.