Compact File Used improperly

We recently read that the "save compacted copy" option should be used before attempting a recovery. We then made the perhaps illogical conclusion that the smaller, the better, and began saving compacted copies of our customers data files, especially after converting them from FM6 to FM7.

We then read that you should not compact files when large amounts of data are to be added to the file, which, unfortunately, is the case with our customers. And then we started getting reports of slow performance, especially during find requests. Our suspicion is that the two are related. This has been reported on both Mac and Windows machines.

So, my question is whether this makes sense (the compacted file causing slow finds, etc) and if there is any way to "uncompact" a file.

(We do have data updaters, the running of which seemed to increase the size of the file...)