Where's the Outlook Compression Program?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289987

For the record, I gave you a good answer, but I'm going to amplify just a little--the answer you gave is probably exactly what the technician did, but technically it is not really compression but instead compaction. I don't know if the distinction will ever be important to the OP (or many others), but it might be:

When Outlook (and many other programs) say they delete something, they often don't really delete it, but instead mark it for deletion. The (Outlook) program then pretends is is not there. (The reason for this approach is that the actual removal of the data from the file often takes a fairly long time, thus the program avoids this.)

What compaction does is go through the file and actually remove the data that is marked deleted. (Well, usually what it does is create a new file with the same name without the data marked for deletion.)

Compression actually takes all the data that is present and uses various means to make it take up less space. There are many ways to do that, and I won't mention any here.

A compacted file can then be compressed to take even less space. I don't know if Outlook can compress and make use of compressed files. You might compress and Outlook file for backup or to send to someone else, but, unless Outlook can handle a compressed file, you'd have to uncompress it so that Outlook can use it.

A particular problem with compaction is that, if you are trying to keep some data private and secure by deleting it in a program like Outlook that only marks the data for deletion, someone with just a little bit of smarts can find that data again. Hence you'd want to make it a practice to compact your files after deleting something that you don't want to be found.

(Yes, there are ways to recover data from a disk even if it has been deleted (i.e., compacted, but it is significantly more difficult.)

I am often concerned about credit card information stored by a vendor after I've made a purchase. I minimize that, and have started to switch to paypal which *might* add some security (while not providing some of the protections afforded by use of a credit card). My concern is that the vendor's program only marks my credit card number for deletion rather than actually deleting it, it is still present on their computers and could be found. (It is typical for such information to be stored on a database by the vendor's web site--it is typical for databases to mark data for deletion and only actually delete it after compaction.)

On a slightly different point, I had a problem with an online vendor a few years ago--I bought something quite a few years before, then bought something. In the interim, my address changed. I gave them the new address (I saw it), but they sent it to my old address. Apparently, they had a problem and had to restore the database from a backup which still had my old address.

I'm not sure I followed all that. All I want to do is get rid of the files so I don't hit the 2GB limit and have my Outlook blow up again. Will this do it? If not, what will?

"Will this do it?"--probably, on the assumption that you have deleted various emails--they are still using up space and will until you compact the file. The link given somewhere up above gives you instructions on compacting the file.

If you have not deleted emails, you will have to delete some, then run the compaction program before you will see the file size shrink.

Sorry for creating confusion.

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