Donna -
Sorry, I haven't checked the list for about 10 days. Since nobody else has
done so, I wanted to try answering your question.
on 7/19/01 4:08 PM, Donna Hood Pointer wrote:
> Josh: Is this something that should be done periodically as preventative
> maintenance, like rebuilding the desktop in the Finder?
For most folks, no. However, I'd say if your Messages file gets over about
50 megs in size, a weekly rebuild could help to avoid certain types of
crashes and display problems cropping up in your address book and message
lists. Awhile back mine topped 100 megs and I was forced to rebuild every
few days, or OE would simply not run. In between rebuilds I would encounter
very frustrating problems like random blank lines in my message lists,
which, when clicked on, would instantly crash OE. Or large numbers of
entries randomly disappearing out of my address book. Occasionally the
Database file would become so corrupt that its file size in the Finder would
read zero K, and the modification date would read 1904, and trying to back
up the file would cause the hard drive to grind coffee for up to a minute.
The way I understand it, rebuilding basically deletes the Database file and
regenerates a new one from the contents of your Messages file. Some other
information is contained in the database, such as your address book, and
that is preserved for the new version. As long as your Messages file is
intact, you will not lose any messages, although their corresponding records
in the Database might be corrupted so they won't display properly, if at
all. If that happens, just do a rebuild and everything will be there again.
I've never corrupted my Messages file or lost any mail, to my knowledge.
For some reason only the Database is vulnerable. From my experience, the
three main conditions that exacerbate these problems are huge file sizes,
anything that causes OE to crash or freeze while it's writing the Database
file (BAD), and a severely fragmented hard drive. I eliminated two of these
conditions by exporting all but my most critical mail, leaving a 13 MB
Database file, and defragmenting my hard drive with Norton Disk Doctor
(several products do the same). The remaining condition (untimely crashes)
is simply unavoidable if you have an unstable system and you run OE 100
percent of the time, which I do. However, I achieve great peace of mind by
having backups that run automatically every 24 hours, and allow me to
restore my Message/Database files from any day of the week (last Wednesday
for example). Even lightweight OE users should continually back up these
files on a monthly or weekly basis. By the way, at one point I was
star-struck with a new program called Outlook Email Archive (OEA), which you
can download free from <http://digilander.iol.it/capste/oea/info.html>. It
can archive your messages into a database, spreadsheet, or individual files,
up to whatever date you set. You can run it periodically, appending any new
messages onto an existing archive file, and it can optionally dump the
archived messages out of OE for you, keeping the files lean and clean. Be
warned: This program did not work for me. After carefully inspecting its
output after several tries under varying scenarios, it clearly failed to
capture all of the folders I specified, and many of the messages became
truncated (VERY BAD). I trashed OEA and decided to manually drag-and-drop
my messages into the Finder every so often, which works like a charm. Well,
it's a little time-consuming. Unfortunately, OE5 cannot drag-and-drop
entire folders, so if you have a folder of 10,000 messages, you should do
1,000 at a time. And if you have 1,000 folders, well, I don't know what to
tell you.
> In what situation(s) would one want to compact the database as opposed to
> compacting it.
I assume you meant "rebuild as opposed to compact." All that compacting
does is to remove unused space out of your database file, thereby decreasing
its file size, and possibly the time it takes to open. The way OE works,
when you delete a message or contact, in order to make that operation
instantaneous, it simply leaves the remaining space empty and unused,
physically on your hard drive. Otherwise, it would have to rewrite the
entire trailing portion of the database every time you deleted something,
making those operations take a very long time if you had a big database.
You can optionally set OE to compact the database every time you quit the
program ("Schedules" I believe), but to my knowledge that doesn't do much
good besides conserving hard drive space, or making your OE files easier to
back up. It also makes quitting the program an exercise in patience if you
have deleted a lot of messages. I had this turned on for a long time, and
it seems like most of my database corruption and crashing occurred while OE
was quitting (i.e. compacting the database). Now I only do it occasionally,
by holding Option while starting the program.
> In what situation(s) would one want to do both.
If you have a lot of time on your hands.
> I haven't had any problem (yet), although occasionally the program quits by
> itself
I guarantee you have some level of corruption going on. Thank God it's so
easy to fix, and good thing OE is free (otherwise I'd have chucked it long
ago in favor of something more reliable).
I hope that clears things up. If not, let me know.
>>josh
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