I am trying to help manage my senior relative's XP Professional with SP2. I found the inbox.dbx is more than 1 Gig. But when I really got into the Outlook Express I only saw 5 emails there with very limited text content in the inbox. I also checked the "Deleted" folder and it is empty. Nothing in other folders.1. How could the file is so big while there aren't many in there? I know it might have a lot of mails there before but I was told that they were all deleted months back.2. How can I get the file compacted to its true size (for the 7 emails it really have)? I tried to change the store to see if Outlook Express will create a new store file with only 7 emails in there. But the new files created were exactly in the same size as the old ones.Hope some one can give me hints. Thanks.1 person got this answerI do too

Are you sure you are looking at the correct store folder?If you are not interested in looking for missing messages and just want to clean it up, move the 7 messages to a user created folder. Close OE and delete the Inbox.dbx file. A new one will automatically be created when you open OE and IIRC, it should be 139KB in size for an empty Inbox.If you are trying to retrieve messages, post back before you do anything.General precautions for Outlook Express:Do not archive mail in the Inbox or Sent Items. Create your own user defined folders and move the messages you wish to save to them. Empty Deleted Items folder daily. Although dbx files have a theoretical capacity of 2GB, I recommend about a 300MB max for less chance of corruption.Information about the maximum file size of the .dbx files that are used by Outlook Express:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=903095After you are done, follow up by compacting your folders manually while working *offline* and do it often.Click on Outlook Express at the top of the folder tree so no folders are open. Then: File | Work Offline (or double click Working Online in the Status Bar). File | Folder | Compact all folders. Don't touch anything until the compacting is completed.Turn off e-mail scanning in your anti-virus program. It is a redundant layer of protection that eats up CPUs and causes a multitude of problems such as time-outs and account setting changes. Your up-to-date A/V program will continue to protect you sufficiently. For more, see:http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#3And backup often.Outlook Express Quick Backup (OEQB Freeware)http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx Bruce Hagen ~ MS-MVP [Mail]

Thank you for all the hints. I will do that and see whether it works.I do not plan to recover any mails. I checked inside Outlook and found it points to the file location as its store.

I followed the instruction and compacted the folders. It was reduced to be 27MB. That makes sense now. I did not realized that we are supposed to compact folders on a regular basis.Thanks a lot, Bruce.Wayne