Excessive amount of messages

The five of us in our family share the same computer. We use Outlook Express for email, with one main account and four subaccounts. I noticed recently that my teenage daughter, the packrat, never deletes any messages. She has about 2700 messages in her Inbox. Do these messages take up much space? How can I tell how much space they take up? I ask this because I also recently noticed that my 40 gig hard drive is already half full. I've only had this computer since last August. It replaced a computer that had a 13 gig hard drive that we did manage to fill most of the way up. It seems surprising that we could surpass that number already.
I ask this because I believe in choosing my battles when it comes to teenagers. I know she won't want to delete messages, so I don't want to tell her to unless it's neccessary.
Thanks, in the name of family harmony!

 

Do a file find for *.dbx files. These are OE mailbox extensions. Check the mem/sizes as desired.

NOTE:Before doing a "file find" or searching your hardrives for files or folders (via the F3 keyboard key or Taskbar_Startbutton>Find> "Files or Folders ")

Make sure you have the ability to view hidden files by adjusting preference options in....
1>Click on My Computer icon or if in explorer>toolbar>view
2>click on toolbars "View" category
3>click on "Folder options "
4>click on "View" Tab:
5>and scroll to the [Hidden Files] section and enable or disable the options below by unchecking or checking as designated:
"Do Not show hidden files "=unchecked
"Do not show hidden or system folders "=unchecked
"Show all Files "= checked
"hide file extensions for known files "=unchecked
Reboot

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This is not the best Habit to practice for OE and can be risky as well as a performance drag. You may wish to find out how to back this puppy up and move those emails to an outside source such as a floppy or cdrom burn.

See:
Performances issues:
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/performance.htm

Oe Tools:
Backup....
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/tools/

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Personally 2700 emails in an mailbox folder must be a pain to dig through when trying to find a particular email. Being a big fan of DragNDrop did you realize you can dragNdrop these emails from OE to a folder of your choice and drag them back in again when desired.

You could incourage organizing these by making a folder with subfolders using names that make sense to the individual, in this case your daughter, and put the OE Keeper_Folder\subfolders in "My Documents ". When she gets an email she can dragNdrop it into the organizational [sub]folder. When she wishes to read it again she can do so by clicking on it or by dragging it back into the inbox.

NOTE:She can also rename these emails to something that makes sense to her also.

When backing up back up the "My Documents" folder. This folder is usually included in any regular backup routine anyway, whereas the OE backup may be overlooked.