If, instead of setting Exchange's option Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting, you use your Deleted Items folder as a long-term repository, you might find a one-step "Purge" command more convenient than opening that folder, selecting all the messages, pressing delete, and confirming that you want to delete them permanently. Alternately, you might like a Deleted Items folder that keeps only the messages from the last week. This extension provides just such a command.
Janitor in a DLL runs within Microsoft Exchange, Windows Messaging, or Microsoft Outlook 97, on either Windows NT (version 3.51 or later) or Windows 95.
Download mtwb.zip (available in both Intel and Alpha flavors) from this Web page, and unzip it. Copy the DLL mtwb.dll into your system directory (\windows\system on Windows 95, \windows\system32 on Windows NT). Check your system directory for the file msvcrt40.dll on Alpha, or msvcrt.dll version 4.20.6201 on Intel; if you lack this, see the runtime installation instructions. Finally, merge the contents of the file mtwb.reg into the registry, either by double-clicking its icon in the Windows Explorer or by selecting Merge from its right-mouse-button context menu.
Within Exchange, you may configure Janitor in a DLL through the Janitor tab on the Tools - Options property sheet.
Exit and log out of Exchange. Fire up regedit, open the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software \Microsoft \Exchange \Client \Extensions
and delete the "Janitor in a DLL" tag and its value. Delete the file mtwb.dll from your system directory.
On the File menu of the viewer you will see a new command, Expunge Deleted Items. You may place this command on the toolbar if you like. To configure the behavior of Expunge Deleted Items, visit the Janitor tab on the options property sheet.
On the Janitor property sheet tab, if the checkbox Automatically expunge deleted items is set, Janitor will spring into action whenever the user closes Exchange. This is almost the same function as that controlled by the checkbox Empty the 'Deleted Items' folder upon exiting on the General tab, except that the Janitor function offers more options. If you set this checkbox, be sure to clear the corresponding checkbox on the General tab.
If the radio button Completely empty the Deleted Items folder is set, Janitor will remove every item from the Deleted Items folder whenever the user invokes Expunge Deleted Items.
If the radio button Leave some items in the folder is set, Janitor uses the next group of controls to determine how many messages to leave when it expunges the Deleted Items folder. The user may specify a maximum number of messages for the folder to contain; Janitor will leave that many messages in the Deleted Items folder, removing other messages from oldest to youngest. Alternately, the user may specify the maximum number of days for a message to remain in the folder; in that case, Janitor will cull any message older than the specified limit. Finally, the user may specify both, in which case Janitor will apply both heuristics.
Merely emptying the Deleted Items folder does not shrink the disk file backing a Personal Folders message store. To compact the store and reclaim the space of the deleted items, go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Mail and FAX (or from the Microsoft Exchange menu, Tools - Services), select Properties on the Personal Folders store, and press the Compact Now button.
If, after installing Janitor, you can't locate its toolbar button in the Tools.Customize Toolbar dialog, you probably have MS Office95 WordMail installed. Word 7.0 has a bug where, if its WordMail function ("Use Word as your email editor") is installed before Janitor in a DLL, it will hide Janitor's toolbar button. To work around this, uninstall and reinstall WordMail, or else go to the registry key named above, remove the two keys "Wordmail" and "Stationery," and then restore those two keys.
Alternately, you may have a version of comctl32.dll that doesn't like your version of Exchange. Many releases of Internet Explorer 3.0 installed a version of this DLL that will scramble the toolbar buttons of Exchange add-ins such as Janitor.
Messages in the Sent Mail folder that were sent from Microsoft Outlook 97 do not maintain the timestamp that Janitor uses to age old mail. If you move such messages into the Deleted Items folder, then invoke Janitor, Janitor will treat them all as being ready to delete, regardless of their actual date of composition.
Last modified: 13 August 1998
Copyright 1996-1998 Ben Goetter. All rights reserved.