Windows Mail can compact the messages store

  • Thread starter Thread starter jdc43
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jdc43

I get the "Windows Mail can compact the messages store" message every time I
start up.
When I click okay it starts up, then a new box with "The folder is currently
in use by Windows Mail or by another application".
I click okay, but this just goes on and on and on and I go round in circles.
What can I do to stop this as no other programmes are running and I use
Windows Live Mail.
 
If you are using WLM, then Windows Mail should not begin running.
Make sure WLM is the default email program:
Open the Default Programs applet, which you can access either from
the Start menu or via the Control Panel, then click the first item:
"Set your default programs."
After a few seconds, a list of programs comes up. Click on "Windows
Live Mail". If it doesn't respond with "This program has all its defaults"
then fix it by clicking on the option indicated by the first green arrow.
 
Mike, I don't see a problem statement from you in this thread.
Both Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail are mentioned in this
thread, so it isn't even clear which email program you are concerned
about. Please post back with more details.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP (Mail)


Mike said:
That does not fix it for me.

its a stupid bug that should be fixed.

Its annoying..
Click to expand...
 
His problem is that when he opens Windows Live Mail it prompts him to compact
his emails. When he clicks OK, another box pops up and says The folder is
currently in use by Windows Mail. Here is the problem, not only are your
email messages associated with Windows Mail but your News lists are also
associated with Windows Mail. So what Mike needs to do is go into your Set
Program Defaults (If you are running Vista go to Control Panel, click
Programs, click Set Default Programs, select Windows List Mail (News) and
check all the boxes, then select Windows Live Mail and check all the boxes
there as well. This should potentially solve your problem.
 
I have Windows Mail (not Windows Live Mail) and I am experiencing the same
thing. I click OK on the Windows Mail can compact the messages store and get
another message window that says "The folder is currently in use by Windows
Mail." I attempted to follow Dave Critchely's advice but couldn't follow
through because my control panel doesn't have a listing with just "Programs"
listed. The closest one on my list is "Programs and Features." When I click
on it it just lists all of my programs but there is none that states "Set
Default Programs." So I can't go any further. What do I do now? And yes,
my operating system Windows Vista.

Dave Critchley said:
His problem is that when he opens Windows Live Mail it prompts him to compact
his emails. When he clicks OK, another box pops up and says The folder is
currently in use by Windows Mail. Here is the problem, not only are your
email messages associated with Windows Mail but your News lists are also
associated with Windows Mail. So what Mike needs to do is go into your Set
Program Defaults (If you are running Vista go to Control Panel, click
Programs, click Set Default Programs, select Windows List Mail (News) and
check all the boxes, then select Windows Live Mail and check all the boxes
there as well. This should potentially solve your problem.
Click to expand...
 
jdc43 said:
I get the "Windows Mail can compact the messages store" message every time I
start up.
When I click okay it starts up, then a new box with "The folder is currently
in use by Windows Mail or by another application".
I click okay, but this just goes on and on and on and I go round in circles.
What can I do to stop this as no other programmes are running and I use
Windows Live Mail.
Click to expand...

I also have this problem. But it occurrs when I exit Windows Mail. I also
have a second problem of not being able to send emails. I am wondering if
the two are related. I have tried the fix of checking all the boxes in the
default programs for Windows Mail and Newsgroups.

Tia
 
For the first, try clicking on the Mail Inbox before closing Windows Mail.
I used to get that error when I closed the program with the newsgroups open.
 
Dave said:
For the first, try clicking on the Mail Inbox before closing Windows Mail.
I used to get that error when I closed the program with the newsgroups open.


--
Windows 7 RC
http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview
http://download.live.com/wlmail



I tried clicking on the inbox before exiting and I also tried using the exit from the file drop down box instead of using the "x" in the corner. But it made no difference. I mostly use Windows Mail but I also have another email program called IncrediMail that I sometimes use. Could having this second email program cause the problem?
Click to expand...
 
Like the original poster, I use Windows Live Mail with Vista Home Premium and
get the following message every five minutes or so:

"Windows Mail can compact the message store. This may take up to a few
minutes."

I click OK, and a compacting database dialog appears for a few seconds
before I get this dialog:

"The folder is currently in use by Windows Mail or by another application."

I click OK and 5 minutes later the process repeats. (So, as you might
imagine, we try to keep Windows Live Mail closed at all times.)

So I went to "Start >> Default Programs >> Set your default programs" and
set all defaults for Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Mail (News).

The problem persists...

The Windows Contacts entry has 4 out of 5 defaults since Windows Live Mail
has the *.vcf Windows Live Mail Contact File.

I'm running AVG version 8.5.409 anti-virus.

So, I clicked the "Get help from communities" link on the last dialog
message and found this thread after searching on the error message (which
turned up no other helpful results via Google).

Thanks for any ideas!!


Dave Critchley said:
His problem is that when he opens Windows Live Mail it prompts him to compact
his emails. When he clicks OK, another box pops up and says The folder is
currently in use by Windows Mail. Here is the problem, not only are your
email messages associated with Windows Mail but your News lists are also
associated with Windows Mail. So what Mike needs to do is go into your Set
Program Defaults (If you are running Vista go to Control Panel, click
Programs, click Set Default Programs, select Windows List Mail (News) and
check all the boxes, then select Windows Live Mail and check all the boxes
there as well. This should potentially solve your problem.
Click to expand...
 
First, double check or triple check what is happening and what you are
doing. You are getting error messages from Windows Mail yet you are trying
to fix Windows Live Mail. They are totally different.

Then, I would suggest that it is better to create a new thread instead of
using an old thread. It is good that you searched for previous answers and
it will be impressive if you create a new thread and then provide links to
the previous threads such as the one you are replying to.

Under the circumstances, if you simply reply here and clarify which software
you are using and confirm you are not as confused as it appears to be the
case (the names are confusing; Microsoft intentionally confuses us) then
hopefully the experts will have some help.
 
Windows Live Mail is my default for mail and news, but I keep having the same
problem as everyone else here. Windows Mail wants to compact compact the
message store." I click OK, but then I get the "The folder is currently in
use by Windows Mail or another program.", yet WLM is closed. Also in Windows
Mail I have set the compact message store to 999.
 
No, not everyone else here. A few people report having the problem but not
most. Also note that there are millions of people that don't report any
problem.
 
"Everyone else"? Not likely.
You keep using the mail program names Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail,
and "WLM" interchangeably, but they are not the same program. Please
identify which program you are concerned about. If your current issue is
with Windows Mail, consider upgrading to Windows Live Mail:

http://download.live.com/wlmail
 
Ηι ,
I find a solution for your problem whitch occurs every time you try to
compact the message store of Windows Mail and
receive an unexpected message like this ""The folder is currently
in use by Windows Mail or by another application". "


This problem occurs if you have a large mailbox with many e-mails folders
which have thousands of e-mails letters each.

Try to do the following steps if you want to resolve this problem with
Windows Mail and successfully compacted the entire message store:
1. Search all e-mail folders and your Inbox in your Windows Mail Profile
and find all folders which have over 30000 each or many thousands of e-mails
each.
2. Delete some of these E-mails ( each folder must have total e-mails not
over 29000 ) or Move a package of these e-mails to a different e-mail folder.
3. Each of your e-mail folders inclunding your Inbox & Sent Items & Junk
E-mails must have e-mails items than not exceeded the number of 29000- 30000
for each folder .
4.After that try again to compact your Windows Mail Message Store
5.If you don't receive again the "message" go to
UserProfile\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\WindowsMail.MSMessageStore
and review the size and modified date of WindowsMail.MSMessageStore file.If
the size of this file decreased and the modified date change you have
successfully compacted the entire message store.Check the application log for
information message about this.


Maybe there is a limitaiton of the e-mails' total number ( 29000 - 30000)
per e-mail folder in WindowsMail Application .
Of course in Windows Mail you able to have huge mailboxes with milion of
e-mails and total size over 5- 10 GB or more but if you have an e-mail
folder with 30000 e-mails you probably have this problem when you try tou
compact your message store . - You receive messages like this ""The folder
is currently
in use by Windows Mail or by another application". "

Thanks ,


Skok
Spiros Kokolakis

MCSE , MCP+I, MCP
 
The number of messages in a folder is irrelevant. I have tested with over 300,000 messages in a single folder. The "in use" error message rarely occurs and when it does, it usually indicates database corruption. If that is the case, then the user can repair the database (www.oehelp.com/WMUtil/) and compact it and then when prompted the user should allow WinMail itself to compact the database. The issues in WinMail with respect to compaction are quite different from the issues in OE (see www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2 (point 2)), as the messages are not compacted in WinMail, but only the database.

steve
 
I'm having a problem in that class but with newsgroups messages, not emails.

Windows Mail runs rather slowly if there are more than 50,000 messages per
folder, and is unable to sort them by arrival data and time starting around
80,000 per folder. Displaying more messages per folder works properly
if arranged by some other methods, such as the message size.

Under 64-bit Vista, all attempts to open Windows Mail at all, even after
running WMUtil, give an error message:

Windows Mail could not be started.. The application
was unable to open the Windows Mail message store.
Your Windows Mail mailbox data is currently being
used by another program, such as a virus scanner.
Close the program or wait for it to complete its
operation, then open Windows Mail again.
(0x800C0155)

and then another error message:

Windows Mail could not be started because MSOE.DLL could not be
initialized.

Note that neither error message gives much hint of just what other program
is using the database.

Closing down the antivirus program is difficult, and does not help with this
problem.

This problem has lasted for weeks, even after a few reboots.

Under 32-bit Vista (another computer), Windows Mail will run but is unable
to compact its database. It tries, then fails about a third of the way
through the progress bar. WMUtil can compact its database, but without
letting Windows Mail know to reset the number of runs since the last
database compaction.

Also, the 32-bit machine has been unable to perform message searches (such
as all messages mentioning a certain website) for a few months.

Both problems appeared to start about the time changes in the search
routines made Windows Mail able to search for strings in English, but in
character sets used mostly for other languages (something seen frequently in
recent newsgroups spam). Apparantly, this change causes a great increase in
the memory requirements for running Windows Mail; I've even seen it trying
to use 17 GB, on a machine that only has 8 GB.

WMUtil estimates the number of files in the database on the 64-bit nachine
at 2,300,000, and the number on the 32-bit machine at 700,000. Spread among
various folders, of course. A large fraction of these are the same post
downloaded from more than one newsgroups server - know any program that can
find those duplicates and let the user decide what to do about them? Also a
significant number are cases where Windows Mail failures have left pointers
to non-existant files in its index files -something WMUtil does NOT detect
as equivalent to a zero-length file.

I've tried installing Windows Live Mail on the 64-bit machine. It
installed, but was unable to import any messages from the Windows Mail
database, apparantly because it needs to run Windows Mail while doing this,
and gets the same error messages and at least one more when it tries this.
Also not fixed by several reboots.

Robert Miles

The number of messages in a folder is irrelevant. I have tested with over
300,000 messages in a single folder. The "in use" error message rarely
occurs and when it does, it usually indicates database corruption. If that
is the case, then the user can repair the database (www.oehelp.com/WMUtil/)
and compact it and then when prompted the user should allow WinMail itself
to compact the database. The issues in WinMail with respect to compaction
are quite different from the issues in OE (see www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#2
(point 2)), as the messages are not compacted in WinMail, but only the
database.

steve
 
My first guess is that your antivirus software has messed things up royally and that is why you are having the issues you have. There should be no database pointers to zero byte files, so something outside of WinMail's operations got in there and screwed things up. You can rename the message store directory with WinMail closed and then that will generate a new one that is uncorrupted.

WMUTil has no affect on the registry settings of Winmail. Its sole use is to compact and repair the WinMail database and to unstick messages in the outbox.

My OEX program (www.oehelp.com/OEX/) will remove duplicates in Local Folders, but not in NG Folders and it won't work in 64 bit systems, but it will work in both OE (XP or whatever) and WinMail (Vista, Win7).

steve
 
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