Thanks for the info Bruce.  Guess I have some
housekeeping to do.

No, and you don't want to. But if you compact
manually prior to 100
closings, you won't see the prompt. Please read
on.

Why does OE insist on compacting folders when I
close it?:
http://www.insideoe.com/faqs/why.htm#compact

About File Corruption:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/filecorruption.mspx

Compacting your folders periodically is a must to
keep OE functioning well
and at some point, you may lose all your saved
messages if you don't. When
you delete, or move messages, the space they had
used remains until you
compact. Never touch anything until the compacting
is finished.

See:
www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2

With SP2, automatic background compacting was
removed due to problems it
caused. Now you will get a prompt to compact after
100 OE closings, which
you should do, and don't touch anything until it
has finished. If you
compact manually, at your convenience, this will
also set the counter back
to zero. See this for more information:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#compact

If you are fully patched, you will also now see a
copy of your dbx files
being copied to the Recycle Bin as BAK files.
Should something go awry when
compacting, the messages can easily be restored
from this backup. A manual
compact will also reset the counter in the
registry back to zero now.

For more info, see the information outlined in red
here:
www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2

To keep things running smooth, and for faster
compacting:

Do not archive mail in default OE folders. They
will eventually become
corrupt and you may lose mail. Create your own
user defined folders for
storing mail and move your mail to them. Empty
Deleted Items folder
regularly. Keep user created folders under 100MB,
and Default folders as
empty as is feasible.

And backup often.

Backup and Restore:

http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/backup/

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx