Join Early Retirement Today
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
How many emails do you keep?
Old 01-02-2008, 11:48 PM   #1
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 159
How many emails do you keep?

I know this may be a silly question, but given it is the New Year and most people are trying to organize and reorganize themselves and their living spaces, I am curious as to what you consider average for you when it comes to opened emails not deleted; or unopened emails kept with the thought of going back and spending more time going through them. I find myself with nearly 500 on my email account. I keep thinking I'll delete them, but I always hesitate and they keep piling up.

Any suggestions for dealing with this problem and determining what stays and what goes?

The Professor
education is offline   Reply With Quote
Join the #1 Early Retirement and Financial Independence Forum Today - It's Totally Free!

Are you planning to be financially independent as early as possible so you can live life on your own terms? Discuss successful investing strategies, asset allocation models, tax strategies and other related topics in our online forum community. Our members range from young folks just starting their journey to financial independence, military retirees and even multimillionaires. No matter where you fit in you'll find that Early-Retirement.org is a great community to join. Best of all it's totally FREE!

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest so you have limited access to our community. Please take the time to register and you will gain a lot of great new features including; the ability to participate in discussions, network with our members, see fewer ads, upload photographs, create a retirement blog, send private messages and so much, much more!

Old 01-02-2008, 11:59 PM   #2
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
growing_older's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 2,657
I think it's easiest to make a new folder for archive2007 and stuff everything in there. If you ever need them again you can go find them. If you don't they won't be clogging up your current inbox.
growing_older is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 07:00 AM   #3
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
donheff's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Posts: 11,317
I have about 70-80 in each of three email accounts. Once in a while I scroll through and delete most of what is piling up. Anything I think I should keep for the duration I archive. But I almost never access the archive so I question whether it is worth bothering.
__________________
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre -- Albert Camus
donheff is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 07:14 AM   #4
Moderator Emeritus
W2R's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: New Orleans
Posts: 47,473
I delete spam without opening. I open all other e-mails immediately. I delete work e-mails that do not pertain to me or that I will not need, immediately after opening them.

I do not delete e-mails that I might need (at work) or want (from Frank and relatives, at home). I keep between five and ten thousand e-mails, and about 90% of those are work related on my computer at work.

Space is not often an issue, but if/when it is then I go through and delete some. I also do this on days like today, when many of my co-workers are out and I have a little spare time to go through them. With ER coming up in 674 days, I will need to get rid of a lot more of the work e-mails to be merciful towards whoever takes my position.
__________________
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. - - H. Melville, 1851.

Happily retired since 2009, at age 61. Best years of my life by far!
W2R is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 07:55 AM   #5
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
DangerMouse's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Silicon Valley
Posts: 1,812
I have hundreds in each of my home and work accounts. I have resolved to be better at dealing with emails in 2008 and have started going thru them each night.

My problem is I never respond to said emails, even when they are from friends, so I figured if I want to keep said friends I need to make more of an effort with email.
__________________

I be a girl, he's a boy. Think I maybe FIRED since July 08. Mid 40s, no kidlets. Actually am totally clueless as to what is going on with DH.
DangerMouse is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 08:00 AM   #6
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
retire@40's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,670
I keep all non-spam emails for as long as I can.
__________________
No man is free who is not master of himself. --- Epictetus
Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think). --- Guy Lombardo
retire@40 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 08:11 AM   #7
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
RunningBum's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 13,202
I keep hordes of emails for work. I try to delete the earlier ones in a thread if people include the previous text in an email. I use a search tool called X1 with Outlook that lets me search emails by any word or phrase, sender, receiver, subject, etc., and I'm well-known among my peers for being able to find details on a topic that came up two years ago. This has helped so many times that I keep anything I think might be useful.

Spam, stuff that doesn't pertain to me and never will, etc, I delete right away to keep it from building up.

Personal emails, only if I think I'll need it again. A long holiday email is worth keeping. "Do you want to see a movie on Friday?" is not, once you've replied. And I try to reply right away or flag those so I don't forget them. I also like to keep emails where people included a bunch of other email addresses, you never know when you might need to email that person directly and it's nice to have their email.

I've done the archive2007 type thing before and it works well, especially if you're the type that can remember things pretty well by year. I haven't done that since switching to Outlook, but that actually sounds like a good idea. I think I'll do that for all but 2007, there's too much carry over on recent stuff so I want to keep that in my inbox.
RunningBum is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 08:59 AM   #8
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 11,401
I sometimes get up to 100 emails a day, most of them work related and many with multiple (large) attachments. I have developed a large system of "personal folders" at work. There must be about 40 of them. I empty my inbox at least daily and file the emails in the personal folders. My goal is to deal with them as they arise, or, when the thread is very active, to let the exchange play out, say my piece, and batch file them. When away from the office, I can access my inbox but not my personal folders, so that's the only time emails accumulate in my inbox. With the volume of emails I receive, that means I often exceed my storage limit after 3-5 days out of town. If that happens I will delete as much as possible and empty the trash daily. I also empty the junk mail and spam folders on a regular basis.

The personal folders are invaluable for future use, but of course, eventually everything becomes obsolete. Once a year or so I will open up each personal folder and delete all but the last six months or so, unless it's a "must keep" topic. I don't try to select individual old emails to delete as that would simply take too much time.

A CEO once told me that he used to sort all incoming information into what could be dealt with immediately and "pending". If there was no action on "pending" items after sixty days, out it went. That might be a bit risky. But a good springclean now and then is essential.
Meadbh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 10:38 AM   #9
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 398
At work, where I'm on a Unix system, I get 500-600 email messages a day and save them all. I have a couple of million messages saved by person (one file per person), although I do have a few generic categories such as "junk" and "misc". I use the old fashioned command-line "mail" utility so it is easy for me to search for information using Unix commands and standard file editors (e.g., grep, awk, vi, emacs). Yes, occasionally I have a need to find information from several years ago and I can usually locate it very quickly. We have very good spam filters at work so I don't get much in the way of spam, but I do get a lot (95%) of useless messages.

At home, on a PC, I simply archive the relatively small number of useful messages into a single folder and delete the rest.
Shawn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 11:53 AM   #10
Moderator Emeritus
bssc's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 10,125
Hordes of email here too. They are sorted but I believe that I have one from 1995.
__________________
Angels danced on the day that you were born.
bssc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 01:06 PM   #11
Full time employment: Posting here.
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 927
at home, I get rid of most of them right away.

At work, I hang on to all of them for as long as possible (in other words, until the system forces me to make space).

Invaluable CYA materials -- I just this week rebuilt a communications history to protect myself from a salesperson who claimed I hadn't kept him informed.

Too bad for him, I had it in writing.
Caroline is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2008, 05:37 PM   #12
Moderator Emeritus
Ronstar's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Northern Illinois
Posts: 16,543
I keep all work related emails at work. Makes it very easy to search and find something several months later. Delete most home emails after reading them.
Ronstar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 12:19 AM   #13
Moderator Emeritus
bssc's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 10,125
At work, they purge all emails after two years so that they will not be discoverable.
__________________
Angels danced on the day that you were born.
bssc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 01:03 AM   #14
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 55
For work I limit emails to 10-15 active or pending action, all others are deleted.

At home I useually read, reply, delete same day. This way when I check my emails they are all new.
sunshine is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 06:24 AM   #15
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
donheff's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Posts: 11,317
Quote:
Originally Posted by bssc View Post
At work, they purge all emails after two years so that they will not be discoverable.
Damn right. About six years ago, we got a big discovery request going back to the dawn of time. It turned out the email team had improperly kept weekly backup tapes going back for years. They had to mount them all and search for relevant messages. It was a major PITA.
__________________
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre -- Albert Camus
donheff is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 08:31 AM   #16
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
cute fuzzy bunny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Losing my whump
Posts: 22,708
I have about 2800 split between gmail and hotmail.

I used to keep up with deleting messages until they started jacking up the storage space on the free email sites to GB levels. Now I figure by the time I no longer need them in 2-3 years, they'll be trimmed off the end. Or these guys will keep bumping the storage limits up and in 15 years I can go back and read some funny old emails from the old days.
__________________
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Just another form of "buy low, sell high" for those who have trouble with things. This rule is not universal. Do not buy a 1973 Pinto because everyone else is afraid of it.
cute fuzzy bunny is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 05:53 PM   #17
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 97
All of them. I keep all of them, except for obvious spam. I have tons of bacn though. Given how much space I have to store them, why wouldn't I? I suppose that it makes the ones I search for harder to find, but I'm really good at remembering the specific language used in them, so I have few problems.
starter82 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-04-2008, 06:19 PM   #18
Recycles dryer sheets
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 192
About this time every year I zip a copy of my mail directory, back it up off site, and delete the previous year's mail from the directory. I have a copy of everything going back to 1993. I hope to have some time when I am ER'd to go through it all and "organize". The same problem/solution with digital photos, keep everything, organize some other day...
__________________

NotSoonEnough is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-05-2008, 04:12 PM   #19
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
TromboneAl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 12,880
I've accumulated 5099 emails in gmail since I started using it in Jan, 2006. I never delete any, and gmail's search is good at finding things, so I don't need to organize them.

Of course, I average on seven emails per day, but I really like gmail.
__________________
Al
TromboneAl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-05-2008, 11:02 PM   #20
Full time employment: Posting here.
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Okanagan Valley
Posts: 808
I delete as many emails as I can as quickly as I can. Probably have no more than about 50 in a Saved folder that contain informatiion I believe I will have to access from time to time. Ideally, I would have zero emails.
AltaRed is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Fake emails Shredder Other topics 17 05-11-2020 02:52 PM
Is there a service that can notify me of emails by text message? thefed Other topics 6 12-30-2007 08:52 PM
forwarded "FYI" emails maddythebeagle Young Dreamers 22 12-01-2007 06:58 PM

» Quick Links

 
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:58 PM.
 
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.