"Deekus" wrote in message
...
Similar to Edward I have a question about a third party backup program for
Outlook Express.

I have found that even with deleting messages from some or all folders, as
well as having an empty deleted items folder, and I backup the program
settings, email messages etc the backup file gets bigger and bigger. The
only
way to reduce the backup file size is to create new folders with similar
names "Deleted Items2" folder copy the existing messages across from the
original folder into the new folder , delete the old folder and then
rename
to new folder to the original folder name. This can be very laborious. It
appears that either Outlook Express or the third party program retains the
information about the deleted messages and adds to the size of the backup
file, so that you can end up with an empty Outlook Express program and
folders that is 146Mb in size, which is rediculous!




File | Folders | Compact All.

When a message is "deleted" from a mail folder, it's not "deleted" it's
marked as "deleted" so it won't show it.
When you Emtpy the Deleted Items folder you're not really "deleting" them,
you're just hiding them from view.

Compacting will remove them.