what does the message "to free up disk space outlook express can compact messages" mean?

Question

when outlook express is shut down this message appears. It also says "this may take up to a few minutes"

Answer 1

outlook archives the messages and make it small in size by compacting it...this helps save disk space

Answer 2

When you save anything it is saved to your Hard Drive (Disk Space). So, your Outlook Express can look and see that you may be using 50 MB of Disk Space for letters, etc. In a way it can compress/compact/zip the information so it use 35 MB of Disk Space giving you an extra 15 MB for something else. This just an example, but, hope you understand.

Answer 3

What it's telling you is that you need to compress or get rid of some messages. Apparently you are approaching the limit of your storage in Outlook Express. All mail services have a limit. Delete or offload some messages.

Answer 4

Like what others have replied it saves space. The drawback is whenever you open/view the message it takes longer to open (depends on how fast your computer is, it may not matter) as it takes additional processing resource to uncompress the file back for viewing/opening. If you keep many messages, especially with graphics, it may be worthwhile, otherwise you don't need to compact the messages.

Answer 5

It means exactly what it says, compacting your messages to free up disk space!!

Answer 6

Just like you you put in a rar or zip archiev your files!
But this compress it in an other way!
Your messages get to some disk space so ... you got it?
Hope i was explicit!

Answer 7

If the computer was an office, it's the same as tidying up an office, putting everything in its right place and giving you a clear space to work with.

Answer 8

First of all why are you using outlook express in my opinion it is just a waste of space on your hard drive. Why dont you use yahoo duh. but any way it just puts them into a zipped file...