AOL has been in the email business since 1985, so it’s no surprise that the company keeps old mail for a long time. AOL says that it keeps mail for “a minimum of five years and up to 25 years.” ..
The Mac version defaults to keeping all mail forever; only about a third of PC users have this option selected. There’s an easy way around that if you want to save space, though. Go into the account preferences and find “Remove from Mailboxes.” Clicking on that link brings up options for how long sent and received items are kept on a rolling basis; if you’d rather they disappear after two weeks or three, just change the setting accordingly (though be aware that some support reps recommend leaving item retention at its default).
The next couple of options are, “Remove messages after” and “Remove deleted messages after.” The former controls how long read mail is kept (the default is 30 days), while the latter dictates how long you have to change your mind about deleting a message. AOL’s online help offers this explanation: “When you delete a message from an account that has been set to keep deleted messages for two weeks or less, the system does not physically remove it right away. The system marks it as deleted but keeps the actual message on disk until the retention period expires.” If you go back and want to retrieve that message during the grace period, just select its name from your inbox and hit Undelete.
If you’re really serious about saving space, you can disable the “Save Drafts” box in your account preference (again, under “Mail & Newsgroups”) and set a low limit on the amount of storage each message takes up. Such changes will come into play when you’re running low on space; AOL will ask if you want to keep or delete old mail — but it won’t do so for mail older than two weeks.
Important…
When using AOL 4.0 for Windows, be aware that shutting down an AOL session does not remove any files from the hard drive. While these temporary files are automatically deleted after 30 days, this process may take some time depending on how many messages remain in your inbox and sent folders at the time of shutdown. It’s best to leave your computer on so that AOL can clean up after itself.
Here is the process for those of you who are using Windows 95/98 or a later version of Windows. As long as the AOL software has been removed, you will need to delete the files manually from within Windows Explorer:
Windows 95/98:
Go to Start–All Programs–Common Files\AOL\TopSpeed (or wherever TopSpeed was installed). Verify that “topspeed” is highlighted and click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file topspeed has been successfully deleted.”
Go to Program Files\America Online 4.0a (or whatever version you have) and verify that “aolctrl32.dll” is highlighted and click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file aolctrl32.dll has been successfully deleted.”
Go to Program Files (or wherever AOL was originally installed) and verify that “AOLTray” is highlighted and click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file AOLTray has been successfully deleted.”
Go to the Windows folder, then the System folder, then the CurrentControlSet folder. Verify that your ControlSet number is equal to your current control set number, which you can find in My Computer>Properties>Control Panel or by typing WINVER at the command prompt. If it isn’t, you probably changed control sets at some point. If this is the case, you can view your current ControlSet number by typing SC QUEUE /P and looking for ControlSet .
Next to the correct ControlSet, highlight MSDOS Prompt, then click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file msdosptch has been successfully deleted.”
Highlight SharedMSDosDrives, then click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file sharedmsdosdrive has been successfully deleted.”
Go to Start–Settings–Control Panel–Administrative Tasks–Local Security Policy–User Rights Assignment. In the box that appears, scroll down to the line that says “Log on as a batch job,” and double-click it. In the box that appears, click Add. A new box will appear; type your username under Name. Click OK, then close out of this dialog (the first one).
Next to “Log on as a batch job,” highlight it, then click Delete. You should get a message saying “The file logonbatch has been successfully deleted.”
Go to Start–Settings–Control Panel–Administrative Tasks–Local Security Policy–User Rights Assignment. In the box that appears, scroll down to the line that says “Manage auditing and security log,” and double-click it. In the box that.
