There are numerous ways in which emails, notes, contacts or other data may get deleted from Outlook. Some of the most prominent ways are individually deleting each item, by using shift key to delete a block of emails, by completely deleting the deleted folder by selecting the option “Empty Deleted Items Folder” when we right click on deleted items folder etc. Most of the times when these emails or contacts are been deleted, only the pointers are deleted and not the data. In fact the data would be present until we do not compact the PST file. Once the PST file is compacted the data including emails and contacts would be deleted.

Recovering deleted emails is possible using the email recovery software. This software is also used to recover lost outlook contacts along with recovering deleted emails. Due to the presence of inbuilt step-by-step instructions, this software requires minimum or zero technical knowledge from the user to install and use it to recover the lost data. Some of the prominent features of this software are it can recover emails even when the header of the personal storage file is corrupted, it can work on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2008 and Windows 2003 versions.

Most of them might think, as what exactly does it mean to compact Outlook data files, and why one should choose it?

As we all know Microsoft Outlook stores email messages, task, contacts, journals, appointments etc in a file called .pst file, every Outlook data item (email message, task, contact, etc.) occupies space in a .pst file.

Whenever we delete an Outlook item in a .pst file, the item goes to Outlooks Deleted Items folder. The deleted item still takes up some space in the .pst file; those deleted items can be easily recovered as they are still physically present.

From our point of view, the item is completely gone and it can’t be recovered using any normal means. And the item is deleted from the .pst file too. But the space it occupied is still unavailable for other uses. This means that, unless something happens, your .pst files will get bigger and bigger over time, even if you keep the same number of items in Outlook.

Here the Compact option comes into picture. Compacting Outlook data files reclaims the space that is unavailable because it was previously occupied by an item. This can greatly reduce the amount of space that the .pst file occupies on your hard drive, and helps Outlook function proficiently.

The advantage of using compact option is that it successfully reduces the .pst file size by permanently deleting the deleted Outlook items.

Before compacting, if you have lost any of your important Outlook items either by accident deletion or due to corruption you can easily recover outlook pst using an appropriate recovery tool like Remo Recover Outlook (pst). The same applies if you have lost emails from Outlook express. You can easily recover outlook express emails using Remo Recover Outlook Express.

If you realize that you have accidentally deleted an email after compacting, then there are no chances of recovering those lost emails as they have got permanently erased.