All I am saying is that if you shrink a database and reindex you may end up with just as much free space as you started with. That was my experience.

After the reindex, the freespace is not wasted. It is available for ANY table insert that happens in the future.

All that will happen is that the freespace will decrease and your database files will not expand for a while.

I saw free space in my databases something like your 26%, and as I work a lot with SQL Express and have a 10GB limit this was a concern to me. It meant I had an effective limit of about 7GB not 10GB.

I then changed my nightly indexing from a shrink database / full reindex (sorry I inherited this one!) to a reorganize/reindex based on fragmentation and saw the 26% go down to something more like 5%.

It did take time though - as more data was added to the database.

I am not sure if it can be done instantaneously.