Outlook Express compression and .bak files

Hi,
I noticed my trash can bulging this morning and before I ran CCleaner I opened it to see what was in there and it was full of folders of emails. They had the same names as my dbx folders but were .bak names instead, like draft.bak instead of draft.dbx. I wondered if these folders are cleaned out during compression, because my computer recommended compressing the files yesterday and I let it do that. Are the .bak files ones that should be saved? Is there some setting that they should be kept for a certain amount of time? Or are they made shortterm during the compression?
Anyone know about this?
abri

 

The .bak files in your recycle bin is a result of compression. I don't really understand it, but from what I gather when compress your database, microsoft makes backup files in case something goes wrong during the compression or if you've deleted something you didn't mean to. It should be safe to delete them.

 

Thanks Padams!