Folder Maintenance Centre

The Folder Maintenance Centre allows the user to perform necessary housekeeping selected folders.

Integrity Checking

Check this to let The Bat! repair damaged message bases. Damaged parts are saved into the folder's home directory with a .BIN extension. Those files may contain parts of damaged messages, so you can view them with a text editor and save any relevant information you can find.

Removing Duplicates

Removes any duplicate messages from your message bases. Duplicates are detected by a combination of Message ID, Sender and date of creation.

Purging Old/Excess Messages

Any message you delete will stay in your message base until it is purged. Normally you would set a Purge on exit in the Folder Properties. Any folder you don't have that set for, can make use of this facility to perform a manual purge of the message base.

Compressing Folders

Your message bases are essentially databases. Whenever you delete a message from one, it only gets marked as deleted but is physically still there. This allows you to view messages you may have deleted accidentally. After a Purge action the messages are completely deleted but the space the occupied on disk is still in use. The Compress action rewrites your message bases without deleted messages to save disk space and enhance overall performance.

Note: With large message bases it is a good idea to invoke Compress manually every few weeks instead of letting The Bat! compress folders on exit.

Beware: After purging and copressing you cannot get back any deleted messages!