Why Outlook Express Compacts Your Folders And How You Can Prevent It
The current version of Outlook Express, (version 6), will now automatically compact all of the folders after it has been run 100 times. Why 100 times? I don’t know, but it’s a nice round number so why not? There is a good reason for this compacting and that is to keep your Outlook Express files in good working order.
The problem with this compacting though is that it doesn’t like to be interrupted, so under no circumstances should you try and abort or interrupt it when it is in progress as you are very likely to corrupt your .dbx file and have to try and recover it.
Why is the compacting so necessary though?
It’s because your Outlook Express messages are actually stored in a database and databases need to be compacted to keep them from corrupting and stay in good working order.
What is actually going on when your database/outlook express messages are being compacted is that your deleted messages are finally being removed and wasted space is being removed in order to reduce the database size because the program is only designed to handle folders up to 2 gigabytes.
Note: Just because a folder is under the 2Gb limit will not mean that it does not need to be compacted.
I know you thought you already had deleted those messages but what actually happens is that the file is only marked for deletion and is then simply not displayed to you, except maybe in your deleted folder. So in essence the message does still exist and is still taking up room in your Outlook Express database.
What should you do when Outlook Express is compacting? Absolutely nothing! Really.
What should you do before you either manually compact Outlook Express folders?
* Close ALL of your email messages
* Make sure ALL other application you have been using are closed – I would even include your antivirus program as these by their nature monitor file activity and check files that are being changed….which is exactly what is happening to your outlook express folders.
* If you have your screen saver set to kick in after just a few minutes of inactivity then either temporarily set it to inactive or extend the time it will wait before activating. Screen savers tend to use a lot of cpu and memory when they start so this is a real interruption to Outlook Express
What you should do while it is compacting
* Do not touch Outlook express! I know it’s obvious but just for the record, NEVER try and close Outlook Express when it is compacting files as this is a sure fire way of damaging your dbx file you may lose all your messages.
* Go and get a coffee/tea/beer/whatever or go and phone a friend :)
There is no way to permanently disable the automatic compacting of folders but you can reset the counter so that it doesn’t think it has been run 100+ times. I don’t recommend that you do this because compacting your messages really is a good thing to do, but if you are only a casual user and don’t have that many messages or you haven’t been particularly busy with your delete button and are determined to stop the automatic compacting, then here is a way you can delay that automatic folder compacting operation.
This change involves editing your Windows registry so if you are not familiar with doing this I suggest you just put up with your database being compacted each time you close outlook express. If you aren’t squeamish about this then here is what you need to do to reset the counter.
1) Back up your registry!
If you are new to this but are keen to make this registry or other registry changes then I implore you to always backup your registry before you make any changes. It’s a good habit to get into because even small tweaks can sometimes cause you nasty problems.
2) Close Outlook Express and any messages you might have open.
Note: {GUID} is a really long number that is used for your unique identity.
Another Note: You can also do a search for the “compact check count” key by clicking on Edit on the menu and then clicking on Find. Type in Compact Check Count and click on the Find Next button. Check to make sure that the path above is where that key is located before making any changes to it
6) In the right-hand pane, double-click “Compact Check Count”, then change the value to zero.
You can then close the registry as all changes made are instant, there is no saving when it comes to registry changes, which is why it can be dangerous to make registry changes.
So now you know why Outlook Express automatically compacts your email folders each time you close the program and also what you can and can't do about it. Just a last note though, if you do decide to reset the counter I do recommend that you do a manual compacting of the folders every few times you use Outlook express so that you keep your email files in a good state.
