Windows 7 - old mail

Asked By Bill Walsh

20-Nov-09 10:53 AM

In the folder "indexed file locations" there are a lot of old emails I
thought were deleted from my system. When I try to delete one of them, there
is no option for delete in the menu. How can I get rid of the old emails as
none of them have any importance to me?  Thanks..BW

20-Nov-09 02:01 PM

Hi Bill,

If you are using a 32-bit Vista, th??n you might also see if the free
program "Unlocker" may be able to allow you to delete it.
-=-

23-Nov-09 10:13 PM

Hi, Bill.

How old is "old"?  And how recently were those files deleted?

The indexing service works only in the background so that it does not
interfere with what we are doing in the foreground.  If we keep the computer
busy and are careful to shut it down as soon as we are finished, it might
not get enough "down time" to keep the index up to date.  A lag of several
hours - or even several days - is not unusual for a hard-working system.
Until it has a chance to catch up, it might report that some deleted files
are still there, or that some moved files are still in their old locations -
or other mistakes.

You might want to leave the computer running during your lunch break - or
even overnight.  You can turn off the monitor, but leave the system running
so that background tasks can continue.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

24-Nov-09 10:39 AM

Thanks for replying. However, that is not my puzzlement. It is this: Why
does Vista keep these old files that I intentionally deleted?  When I delete
emails, I use the "shift delete" option. A message box appears and asks "do
you want to permanently
delete this (these) message? I click on the yes option. So why does vista
not let the mesage go away forever? BW

24-Nov-09 11:46 AM

Hi, Bill.

Please tell us again - more explicitly - WHERE you see these files.  The
full pathname, please.  I do not have any folder with that name in either
Win7 or Vista.

The phrase "indexed file locations" turns up plenty of hits on Bing, but the
first half-dozen or so are YOUR post in several different "forums" (soft32,
vistaheads, windowskb, etc.).  You did not post to those forums, of course,
but they all "slurp" messages from these Microsoft public newsgroups to make
their own sites look busier and more expert - and to increase their revenue
from click ads.

There might be something useful in this MSDN link:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdesktopsearchhelp/thread/48e21191-9af6-45e1-9207-25b6872e4ee1/

But my only thought is what I posted earlier:  Vista did not keep those old
files.  The files are gone, but the Indexing Service has not yet caught up
and still shows them as present.  And you did not answer my two questions:

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

24-Nov-09 12:35 PM

I just clicked the start button (windows classic style) In the menu I click
on "search for files or people" A window opens titled "search results" and
the message says:" to begin, type in the search box" In this instance, the
search box is located in the upper right corner. I type in any letter and
the
search window title instantly changed to "search Results in Indexed
Loxations" The second line from the top reads: "Show Only: All, then e-mail
then Document, then Picture, then Music, then Other.  When I click the word
underneath. The dates of the emails go back for months. I can see that this
indexing helps searching for older files, etc. but I would like to delete
the emails only..

24-Nov-09 01:17 PM

I also searched for 'indexed locations" and the folder that came up on my
Vista x64 had tons of old e-mails and newsgroups posts and just about
everything that had been done on the computer dating back to 2001 although I
bought the pc last year new. I figured out that if you select any item you
want to delete then click 'File' then 'Move To Folder' then move these items
to the 'Recycle Bin' then you can delete them from there. My questions are:
Is it safe to just select everything in this folder and delete them? Will it
cause any problems to delete all these items? I thought when you deleted
something it would not be so easy to retrieve them. There is nothing
embarassing or illegal in the folder, it is just when I delete something I'd
like it to be  'more gone' than that.
thanks for any input,
toodawgs

25-Nov-09 11:01 AM

Hi, TooDawgs.


You DID Import your old data from your prior computer, right?


I am not clear on what "this folder" is.  The best way to delete email is
from inside your email application.  In Vista, that is Windows Mail, by
default, but, as in Windows 7,  Windows Live Mail and any of a wide
selection of third-party mail/news handlers may be installed.  Generally
speaking, messages CAN be deleted by using Windows Explorer or other tools,
but this does not give your mail program a chance to clean up after itself
and can result in future problems.

Windows provides several ways to delete files.  Most of those ways put the
deleted items in the Recycle Bin - just in case we change our mind.  (I
have, on several occasions, and have been grateful for this safeguard.)  But
it also provides several ways to empty this Recycle Bin - or to bypass it
entirely, leaving no easy way to recover files.  Then we must locate and use
recovery utilities or (usually expensive) disk recovery services.  (But the
nature of hard disks says that, if you have the resources of the CIA,
nothing ever is really deleted.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

25-Nov-09 11:13 AM

Hi, Bill.

Aha!  So you are looking in Search, not in Windows Explorer.

I have been trying to use Vista's Indexing Service for over 4 years, ever
since Vista was in early beta.  Sometimes it has produced excellent results
for me - but more often I have been disappointed.  At the moment, Win7's
Indexing Options window says I have over 3.3 million items indexed - but a
search for a fellow Rotarian turns up just 2 hits, although I know there
should be at least hundreds of mentions in emails, plus many more in our
weekly Rotary newsletter, which I edited for 3 years and stored in Microsoft
Office Publisher files here on my hard drive.

I am sorry that I cannot be of much help to you on this problem, Bill.  You
might try in the Vista.general newsgroup.

As I just said to TooDawgs in this thread, mail files are best managed from
inside the mail program that you are using.  Deleting them in Windows
Explorer can leave many "dangling threads" that the mail app has to clean
up.

One more thought:  A 10-year old email that was deleted just last week is
not yet "an old file".

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64