Recovering HDD space - Deleting emails and OE not giving back spac

[Guest]

I just deleted a massive amount of duplicate emails from Outlook 2007 and
deleted all (a massive amount again) emails that were in Outlook Express.
Not only did I not recuperate Gigs of space as was the goal in doing so, I
actually LOST free space on the HDD. Could you please explain to me why that
happened and how to fix it??? Is there some kind of temporary folder/cache
for deleted messages in case you need to recover them that will delete itself
in a few hours/days?

I should have regained more than 2 gigs...

Please help!

Benoit Pitre

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Cleared your Deleted Items as well?

Since in either program mails are being stored in a database allocated space
isn't directly returned to the Operating System. When the computer is idle
and Outlook is running and detects it has more than 25% of white space it
will slowly return it to the OS. To force a return right click the root of
your folder set (Outlook Today)-> Properties-> Advanced...-> Compact Now.

Outlook Express has a similar process but then for each folder.