• Welcome to Tux Reports: Where Penguins Fly. We hope you find the topics varied, interesting, and worthy of your time. Please become a member and join in the discussions.

Compacted messages

P

P. Jayant

Flightless Bird
XP during the Disk Cleanup operation indicates that certain old messages
could be compacted. Similarly Outlook Express suggests compacting messages
from time to time. But I have not seen XP reminding a user to look at his
compacted message folder. Is it because these compacted messages are
automatically deleted by XP after a certain period of non-use. Or is the
User expected to open the compacted messages - assuming it is accessible to
him - and delete the compacted messages when he thinks they are of no more
use to him?

P. Jayant
 
B

Bruce Hagen

Flightless Bird
"P. Jayant" <p_jayant@dataone.in> wrote in message
news:edYCsbW9KHA.5476@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> XP during the Disk Cleanup operation indicates that certain old messages
> could be compacted. Similarly Outlook Express suggests compacting
> messages from time to time. But I have not seen XP reminding a user to
> look at his compacted message folder. Is it because these compacted
> messages are automatically deleted by XP after a certain period of
> non-use. Or is the User expected to open the compacted messages -
> assuming it is accessible to him - and delete the compacted messages
> when he thinks they are of no more use to him?
>
> P. Jayant



Compacting does not remove messages. If messages are lost when compacting,
I would respond with this:

The two most common reasons for what you describe is disruption of the
compacting process, (never touch anything until it's finished), or bloated
folders. More on that below.

Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

Why Mail Disappears:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#mailgone

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

Recovery tools:

If you are running XP/SP2, or SP3, and are fully patched, then you should
have a backup of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, (or possibly the
message store), copied as bak files.

To restore a bak folder to the message store folder, first find the
location of the Message Store.

Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder will reveal the location of
your Outlook Express files. Write the location down and navigate to it in
Windows Explorer or, copy and paste it into Start | Run.

In WinXP, the .dbx files are by default marked as hidden. To view these
files in Explorer, you must enable Show Hidden Files and Folders under
Start | Control Panel | Folder Options | View.

Close OE and then in Windows Explorer, click on the dbx file for the
missing, or empty, folder and drag it to the Desktop. It can be deleted
later once you have successfully restored the bak file. Minimize the
Message Store.

Open OE and, if the folder is missing, create a folder with the *exact*
same name as the bak file you want to restore but without the .bak. Eg: If
the file is Saved.bak, the new folder should be named Saved. Open the new
folder and then close OE. If the folder is there, but just empty, continue
on to the next step.

First, check if there is a bak file already in the message store. If there
is, and you removed the dbx file, go ahead and rename it to dbx.

If it isn't already in the message store, open the Recycle bin and right
click on the bak file for the folder in question and click Restore. Open
the message store back up and change the file extension from .bak to .dbx.
Close the message store and open OE. The messages should now be back in
the folder.

If the messages are successfully restored, you can go ahead and delete the
old dbx file that you moved to the Desktop.

If you do not have bak copies of your dbx files in the Recycle Bin, then:

DBXpress run in Extract From Disk Mode is the best chance to recover
messages:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/Default.aspx

And see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#4

A general warning to help avoid this in the future:

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They will eventually become
corrupted. 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 300MB, and Default folders as empty as is feasible.

Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant
layer of protection that eats up CPUs, slows down sending and receiving,
and causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs, account setting
changes and has even been responsible for lose of messages. Your
up-to-date A/V program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For
more, see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3

And backup often.

Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB Freeware)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP [Mail]
Imperial Beach, CA
 
P

PA Bear [MS MVP]

Flightless Bird
Disk Cleanup offers to /compress/ files, not compact them, and this has
nothing to do with compacting OE folders.

P. Jayant wrote:
> XP during the Disk Cleanup operation indicates that certain old messages
> could be compacted. Similarly Outlook Express suggests compacting messages
> from time to time. But I have not seen XP reminding a user to look at his
> compacted message folder...
 
P

P. Jayant

Flightless Bird
Could you kindly throw some light on what is the difference between
"compacting" and "compressing"? In plain English, the two words mean the
same thing.

P. Jayant
 
P

P. Jayant

Flightless Bird
I was under the impression that XP compresses files which have not been
accessed by the user or compacts messages in Outlook Express (newsgroup
messages, in particular) which Users read and forget. I would have no
objection to such messages being deleted from the system after a User
specified period, if the period can be specified in an Option Menu.

P. Jayant
 
B

Bob I

Flightless Bird
Compacting is the "removing" of the space occupied by the deleted
messages. Compressing is the process of using an algorithm to store the
same data in a different method, such as Zip or RAR.

P. Jayant wrote:

> Could you kindly throw some light on what is the difference between
> "compacting" and "compressing"? In plain English, the two words mean the
> same thing.
>
> P. Jayant
>
>
 
B

Bob I

Flightless Bird
You would need to review the Options in OE, or you could post to one of
the Outlook Express groups about it. Don't use OE, so can't help you there.

P. Jayant wrote:

> I was under the impression that XP compresses files which have not been
> accessed by the user or compacts messages in Outlook Express (newsgroup
> messages, in particular) which Users read and forget. I would have no
> objection to such messages being deleted from the system after a User
> specified period, if the period can be specified in an Option Menu.
>
> P. Jayant
>
>
 
O

Olórin

Flightless Bird
In addition to PA Bear's hint (please don't keep snipping replies: "Disk
Cleanup offers to /compress/ files, not compact them, and this has nothing
to do with compacting OE folders") and to Bob I's answer, I would add that
compacting is something that Outlook Express can do to messages in its store
while compressing is an operation that Windows XP can do to files, in case
that clarifies it at all. While the two may mean the same thing in plain
English, the two have different sources in XP.


"P. Jayant" <p_jayant@dataone.in> wrote in message
news:ep9hDxa9KHA.3880@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Could you kindly throw some light on what is the difference between
> "compacting" and "compressing"? In plain English, the two words mean the
> same thing.
>
> P. Jayant
>
 
P

PA Bear [MS MVP]

Flightless Bird
+1

Bob I wrote:
> Compacting is the "removing" of the space occupied by the deleted
> messages. Compressing is the process of using an algorithm to store the
> same data in a different method, such as Zip or RAR.
>
>> Could you kindly throw some light on what is the difference between
>> "compacting" and "compressing"? In plain English, the two words mean the
>> same thing.
 
P

PA Bear [MS MVP]

Flightless Bird
Only if you start quoting the entire message to which you're replying AND
check in at Windows Update to install KB978542 and the other updates your
computer's missing.

P. Jayant wrote:
> Could you kindly throw some light on what is the difference between
> "compacting" and "compressing"? In plain English, the two words mean the
> same thing.
 
Top