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Deleting a Message

As a safeguard against inadvertent deletions, two steps are required to delete a message in Eudora. For any current message, choose Delete from the Message menu. This does not actually delete the message, but transfers it to the Trash mailbox. To delete messages from the Trash mailbox, select Empty Trash from the Special menu. Quitting the program also empties the contents of the Trash mailbox when the Empty Trash on Quit option in the Switches... dialog is turned on. Finally, if you want to delete just a few messages from the Trash mailbox, highlight them and select Delete from the Message menu. Deleting a message that’s already in the Trash removes it from Eudora completely.

Also, unless the Easy Delete option in the Switches... dialog is turned on, any attempt to delete a message that you have never opened (or a Queued message that hasn’t been sent) results in Eudora asking for confirmation before proceeding with the deletion.

Compacting Mailboxes: Recovering Storage Space

Even after a message has been deleted with the two- step process described above, the storage space which that message originally required is still taken. Normally, Eudora recovers this space automatically when it becomes troublesome. However, if disk space is very tight, you can force this to happen earlier than usual. In order to reclaim the storage space, select the Compact Mailboxes from the Special menu. To compact an individual mailbox, hold down the [command]/CTRL key and single-click on the mailbox size display (see the "Mailbox Size Display" section).

Note: Eudora compacts mailboxes automatically when you close them under either of two conditions. Mailboxes are compacted if the amount of wasted space in the mailbox is greater than the amount of space the messages in the mailbox use, or if the amount of space wasted in the mailbox is greater than 5% of the free space on the volume that contains it.

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