How long do you keep emails?

**Squirt** · 09-25-2006, 09:30 AM

I have emails dating back years and I think they might be taking up to much space. How long do you keep emails?

Does archiving emails help?

**badpuppyben** · 09-25-2006, 09:57 AM

I keep all my emails, but I do have to archive them. I usually do it by months for easy reference. In fact if you use an older version of Outlook the .pst file only has a 2 gig limit. Once it reaches that it will crash...I learned the hard way.

**DEVELISH** · 09-25-2006, 10:21 AM

I have rules for thunderbird to shuff emails to foldres where they belong to (basically person names as folder names).

Emails for business I have no rules for since most of it are newsletters anyways which will be deleted after I taught TB that it is consideres SPAM from now on.

The total of all my mailboxes is about 350MB

Besides that: I do not keep logs of any of my messages sent by any messenger (not even Skype even as they are encrypted)

But then... I became paranoid here....

**gaybucks_chip** · 09-25-2006, 06:32 PM

I have nearly all of my inbound and outbound emails since 2001.

I had everything all the way back to 1996, but had a disk crash and discovered that the one backup was unreadable. Now I keep multiple copies of everything. I use Eudora, which has the nice advantage of keeping the emails in a large text file, so if something goes wrong, it can rebuild the indexes of individual mailboxes without loss of data.

marcjacob · 09-25-2006, 07:37 PM

I have a few from last week

. I keep what i think ill need for later. Nothing else. Seems to work, never wanted an email i dont have.

gaybucks_skyler · 09-25-2006, 11:19 PM

I seriously keep EVERY email ever sent or received... LOL I have my first email ever from when I got my first email account in like 7th grade... LOL

I will probably NEVER ever use them, but it still feels nice to have them...

Love, Sky

**citiboyz** · 09-26-2006, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by Squirt

I have emails dating back years and I think they might be taking up to much space. How long do you keep emails?

Does archiving emails help?

I don't have a reason to keep old email. If it's worth saving, I print it out and save it in my filing cabinet. My computers are too jammed up with images and video files anyway. It may seem old-fashioned, but it works for me :-)

**basschick** · 09-26-2006, 12:27 AM

i have every email since 2001, and in my old computer i still have all my emails from 1999.

**chadknowslaw** · 09-26-2006, 04:40 AM

I keep client emails, but if I have a sting of back-and-forth replies I will just keep the long one with all the others at the end and delete the rest. I also delete a lot of personal emails and all those newsletters after reading them.

JohnV · 09-27-2006, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by Squirt

I have emails dating back years and I think they might be taking up to much space. How long do you keep emails?

Does archiving emails help?

Well, I keep mine for years and years as well. Search for the ones with excessive data/attachments and move that data somewhere else.

**Lee** · 09-27-2006, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by badpuppyben

I keep all my emails, but I do have to archive them. I usually do it by months for easy reference. In fact if you use an older version of Outlook the .pst file only has a 2 gig limit. Once it reaches that it will crash...I learned the hard way.

Ben,

How do you 'un-archive' the contents of the .pst file? LOL

I archived a bunch of emails last month before i did a reformat and i cant for the life of me figure out how the hell i can read them again LOL

Regards,

Lee

WegCash Robert · 09-27-2006, 03:09 PM

I keep them all. I have files in my outlook for each person.

**XXXWriterDude** · 09-27-2006, 04:40 PM

OMG! From a YEAR back??? WHY!? LOL!

I'm religious about deleting emails as soon as the issue has been taken care of. I maintain my sent files and deleted files as well. I'm so anal about this. If I have too many emails in my inbin or other folders, I get stressed out.

Delete! Delete! Delete!