thank you for the information. i have seen before that after about 150mb for desktop pro company files start to deteriorate thus my concern. 

i have done both verify and rebuild data and no change.

another thing - i do see currently that there are 3997 DB File Fragments. there were 4 when I started deleting unused accounts, names, customer messages (someone in the past used that field completely wrong so we have 500+ of those) etc. last week. i understand that the increase in fragmentation is likely because the items i deleted but im not sure what to do about that. any advice?

thanks,

mariana