Assuming that you are not using Outlook express to access an Exchange Server E-mail account (Is it a POP address from an ISP?), you shouldn't run into any file size limitations...

If you are using it to access an Exchange server account then you might hit a wall because the file size is limited by your network administrator (Usually at something like 100MB of data). I know there are some users on my network that have got exchange accounts with 200+ MB of E-mail, calander, and other outlook objects saved... I've had to raise the file size limits a number of times beacuse they were complaining that they couldn't send/recieve/or save and new e-mail...I ask them to clean out some of the old files, but at some point I'm going to need to INSIST that they clean house!

What a bunch of pack rats!

Getting back to how you can delete the Attachments: I know in Outlook (which by the way, I'm told is a more secure program than Outlook Express) you can do an "advanced find" by right clicking on the folder in question and then searching for e-mails with attachments, e-mails over a certain size, e-mails from certain senders, or any of many other criteria. You might be able to do the same or something similair in Outlook express.

Once you've done that, then you could go through the e-mail list that is generated by your advanced search and individually open each e-mail and delete the attachments from the e-mails...At the same time, you could save the attachments you might need later to some other file location where they would be easier to access than by going through Outlook Express.

Option 2: You could also move the e-mails to their own folder, and then archive them to in the .pst format on a CDROM or some other external media so that you could recover them at a later date if the need were to come up... I believe you can also compress the .pst files as well.

Option 3: MASS ATTACHMENT DISPOSAL OPTION... To get rid of the attachments in mass (assuming you will never need them again) You could export the folder containing the E-mails into a file format like .xls (Microsoft Excel), .mdb (Microsoft Access) or even a comma separated .txt format, and then Import them right back from that temporary holding file, into a new Outlook folder.

This will remove the attachments because the attachments are not exported with the e-mail data when you export your folders in this way...Note: this is true even if the attachements are in the format of the program that you are using to export to/from...

Also, I know that if you export to an .mdb format, then you will have an opportunity to select which fields you actually export/import as well.

I hope that all makes sense!