I was not aware that there were problems associated with compaction. After deleting quite a few emails that, by the way, opened just fine I right clicked and selected compact. I retired for the night and when I awoke the folder was empty Unread: o, Total: 0. Since Windows doesn't delete anything from the HD, it just marks it for overwrite and starts with the oldest files first then my logic tells me the data is still there. So how do I get it back?