completely removing emails from outlook express .dbx files

Is there a way to completely remove emails from outlook express .dbx files?

I noticed that when I remove a large email (several megabytes) from the inbox (either by moving it to trash and then emptying the trash or by directly removing it by pressing shift+del) the Inbox.dbx file does not shrink in size.

This leads me to believe that OE only flags the email inside the .dbx as "deleted" without actually removing it.

I already tried the Compact button in the maintenance options, no luck.

 

Eh, I don't believe this is true. If it were, then my hard drive would half full now just with old emails, including all ones deleted over a period of years of using OE on my Win XP system.

I believe the compacting procedure should result in some reduction of space consumed. I don't know whether your observation, based on one file you mentioned, is sufficient to draw a conclusion. Perhaps you need to observe this over a period of weeks or months to really get a clear picture of what's happening.

Edit: Sorry, DomLuc, I didn't see your post before I posted.

 

thanks DomLuc and usafveteran for your replies

it indeed worked by choosing file > folder > compact all folders

all my .dbx files together were 850 mb and after the compacting process they are now 568 mb

that's a whopping 282 mb of old hidden "not yet really removed" emails cleared from the .dbx files!

also thanks for the additional links, DomLuc, that was some informative reading

as one of the articles mentions, I am indeed on XP SP2 and thus my OE files are no longer automatically being compacted in the background and that's why they grew so much more after I installed SP2

 

I did, actually.

I posted this thread after already suspecting for a long time that my .dbx files were being clogged by old "deleted" emails. For the past year or so, whenever I removed emails with big attachments from OE, it never seemed to make any difference.....and it turned out this was the case

 

By default settings outlook express automatically saves deleted items in the deleted items folder.

Also, you did not specify if this is a personal computer or a network

Either, way until you shut down and restart outlook and/or your computer you will not see the size change and from experience with network systems the size can take up to 40 hours to reset and reflect the lesser file size usage.

Make sure you have done the following:

• If you don't want messages to be saved in the Deleted Items folder when you quit Outlook Express, on the Tools menu, click Options. On the Maintenance tab, select the Empty messages from the 'Deleted Items' folder on exit check box.
• To manually empty all deleted items, select the Deleted Items folder. On the Edit menu, click Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder.

You may also increase or decrease file maintenance size:

Increase disk space by deleting stored newsgroup messages

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Maintenance tab, select the options you want for maintaining the size of all message files on your computer. To compact, delete, or remove messages from all or specific message files now, click Clean Up Now, and then follow the instructions on the screen.

 

thank you for your input, jewlzs, but if you read my previous 2 posts, you'll see that the problem has already been solved

but just FYI, it's a local harddisk, I did empty "deleted items" and I did restart OE and windows with no effect