4500 E Mail Messages

"desk top trash can"

If you mean your Recycle Bin, just Right-click >Empty

As far as the email problem, what email client are you using? Outlook? Outlook Express?

I am using Outlook Express. It is my understanding that when INBOX messages are deleated they go to the Deleated Items folder. But they are still on disk.  Apparently you have to get to the dleated items.dbx folder to really deleate these messages. If this is correct them how do I find this folder. Apparently there is another step required prior to deleating items.dbx. I thingk one of my meassages is contaminated. So I want to permanently delete all if not most of mt deleated mail .

Sherr

I do this with my OE every so often just to keep things running smoothly.

Configure to show all files/folders:
Go to Start>Search and at the top select Tools>Folder Options
Select the View tab
Display the contents of system folders
Show hidden files and folders
Uncheck: Hide protected operating system files
Click on Apply.

Move everything out of your Inbox that you want to keep. Put it in Drafts or create a new folder.


.dbx files are used by Microsoft's Outlook express email application and contain your email messages.

Outlook Express saves your .dbx in a folder on your computer. To find the path to this folder, open Outlook Express and select the Maintenance option (tools > options > maintenance).
Screenshot here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx#EKE

When you open the Store Folder in Windows Explorer, you will see a set of DBX files. Every file contains messages from the appropriate message folder in Outlook Express. For example, Inbox.dbx contains emails from Inbox folder and so on.

 
With OE closed, use Windows Explorer to navigate to your Deleted .dbx and delete it. Delete the Inbox.dbx also.
Close Windows Explorer.
Open OE. You will see that new clean! Inbox and Deleted Messages box are created. Move your Inbox messages that you saved back to the New Inbox.

Go back and rehide folders:
Start>Search and at the top select Tools>Folder Options
Select the View tab
Display the contents of system folders
Show hidden files and folders
CHECK: Hide protected operating system files
Click on Apply.

If everything is running well, now Empty your desktop Recycle Bin.

Let us know if that helps. :emotion-1:

Sherr:

Just to add to Bugbatter's info~

Your understanding is correct. Emptying the Deleted Items in OE does not remove them, it just hides them, and marks them for subsequent deletion.

With XP SP2, OE automatically offers to "compact" your folders every 100th time you open it. This should always be allowed. It effectively removes all these hidden emails in your Deleted folder, and also sends them to your desktop Recycle Bin where they appear as files with a .bak (backup) extension.

My habit is to always keep my default OE folders (Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, and Drafts folders) as empty as possible by either "deleting" (essentially hiding, and marking for deletion via compacting) the emails in them, or moving them to a local folder if I wish to save them. Allowing the contents of these default folders to grow to large sizes can cause problems. (As far as I know, any local folders you create to save emails can be as large as you want.)

This automatic prompt to "Compact Folders" is necessary for the health of OE. During the compacting process, which is very CPU intensive, you should not interrupt the process, run other programs, put your PC in standby, or shut down. It can take several minutes, depending on your email volumes. After the compacting process is complete, I check to see that all my OE local folders are intact. Only then do I empty my Recycle Bin of all the .bak files.

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/files/maintain.htm
http://email.about.com/od/outlookexpresstroubles/qt/et_compact_oe.htm
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact