I run Win XP SP3, OE 6.

Following this NG has certainly enhanced my understanding of OE.

I have a question regarding the default folder size. This issue is
mentioned quite frequently in various contexts.

Under "December updates" Bruce Hagen yesterday said { again... :-) }

"Do not archive mail in default OE folders, Inbox, Sent Items, etc., as
they will eventually become corrupt. 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."

= I am assuming "archive" means storing long term.

Background: My default Inbox contains about 1.6 GB, my Deleted Items box
about 0.8 GB, the Sent box about 0.2 GB.

These sizes are far greater than recommended here but I have had few
problems. I have had some loss of msgs in the inbox but they have
reappeared on clicking on another box and then returning to the Inbox, or
restarting OE.

Just for background my Deleted Items box contains a month's worth of
messages. I check it every day and delete anything over a month old. I
find this useful as I often need to check msgs sent/received in the recent
past (I use it a bit like the Windows Recycle bin, but far more often).

Only Compacting tends to fail on the two very large mailboxes, showing an
error msg about the mailbox being in use by another application.

= Why is that?

To get round this problem I move most of the messages out of the two very
big default mailboxes into newly created temporary folders and then compact
the default folders. Then I move the messages back into the default
folders. This always reduces the size of the default mailbox.

Once not long I broke the big boxes into smaller boxes in order to compact
the lot, including the Pop3uidl.dbx file. It has been recommended here to
ensure that the Pop3uidl.dbx file is compacted and I think Compacting All
Folders is the only way to get to it.

Normally I compact individual folders. I have quite a few user-created
folders but they are hardly used so I don't compact them.

To minimise the risks I back all my stuff -- incl OE files -- up daily or
more often (online to a remote server). I have had to restore my OE Inbox
in the past more than once because of damage or loss. From this NG I have
learned why this happens.

= Is there anything I can do to stop the compaction process for the large
default mailboxes failing besides breaking them up into small chunks?

Any other comments welcome, too.

Many thanks.
DAS
--
To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"
---