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Q: In a recent article you said most people aren’t savy enough to know to compact their OE messages.  I use Outlook.  Is compacting necessary in Outlook too?  (I never get any message ‘to free up disk space…”)  If compacting is recommended in Outlook, how is it done?  I do get a message that says “Do you want to archive now?”  Is this the same thing?  Do you recommend archiving emails in Outlook?

– Marilyn M.
Destin, Fla

A: Wow, Marilyn!  I see you took my recent words about keeping your questions short to heart.  I don’t think anyone has ever fit so many questions into such a small space before!  The first answer is yes, users of Outlook should compact their files too, and for the same reasons as I discussed before.  The procedures for compacting vary depending on whether your e-mail account is a business account or a home account.  This is because most businesses provide run their own e-mail server on their corporate network infrastructure, while most home users are subscribers who simply have an account with an Internet provider, which in-turn administers the e-mail server.  I’m going to cover the procedures for home users here, as I presume most business users will have an IT department or other administrator who can help with this question.  In a home configuration, downloaded e-mail (and other Outlook data, such as Calendar) are stored in a Personal Folders File (.pst).  In case you’re wondering why the extension doesn’t match the name, these used to be called Post Office files once upon a time.  Anyway, the default filename is Outlook.pst, and Outlook squirrels it away nice and safe where you can’t find it even if you need it unless you know where to look.  Here’s where:  Click on Outlook’s File menu, and select “Data File Management”.  Select the file you want, and click “Settings…”  Click “Compact Now” to do the business, also noting that this dialog tells you where the file is physically located, just in case you wanted to know.

As for archiving, no, it is not the same thing as compacting.  You probably noticed an entry for “Archive Folders” in the dialog box you opened above.  Outlook has the ability to move old e-mails from the Outlook.pst file to an archive file for long-term storage.  This keeps your regular .pst as clutter-free as possible, and improves Outlook’s performance, as it doesn’t have to wade through years of old e-mails to find that great joke you downloaded from your cousin Shirl in Topeka this morning.  Archiving is pretty easy to set up.  You just choose which folders you want archived, and how many days before old messages get moved, and Outlook does the rest.