Leaving email

[steveark]

Unless your IT department is incredibly talented they will not notice you copying some pst files. Get an Outlook viewer and you are all set to retrieve any old email.

 

[Bamaman]

I was talking to my boss one day back in the pre-electronic days. He asked me how many memos did I ever receive from him. I said I couldn't remember of any.

He said that if you have a trail of memos, it's too easy to hold them against you for various reasons. Especially if the business you're in has the possibility of being litigous.

We see talk in the news of all these politicians, FBI, and other people leaving behind 1000's of emails. And they're going to be used against them--hopefully--in a court of law.

I just wonder with so much communication, how did these people have time to do a job? They look like professional memo writers online.

 

[tbbarton]

Felt similarly

I can say I felt similarity. I had left another role of 15 years 5 years before I retired and still have my Outlook email file. Have I ever used it. Once or twice in the last role I had but 3 years into early retirement and I still have it. At the job I retired from I forwarded the select emails I wanted and honestly did use many of those because they were “job” related and I was retiring. Hard to step away from a lifetime of email but unless you intend to do something that will leverage them, you probably find whatever you decide to do that you didn’t use them much.

 

[sengsational]

Unless your IT department is incredibly talented they will not notice you copying some pst files. Get an Outlook viewer and you are all set to retrieve any old email.

Yes. It would seem pretty straightforward to just open your browser to your personal Google drive and drag your *.pst file there. Then you can ignore it very easily for many years

 

[Skitso999]

If a contact is that important, hand jam it into your google contacts etc or print your address book. Otherwise, ID let it go

I agree. Print it out. It will be sorted by name, and you can easily reference it if you need to. If necessary you can use OCR to put the data back into your computer.

 

[SpinDoctorTX]

So, there's a thing that's got me pretty wound up about retiring, and I wonder whether and how other folks have dealt with it.

I've had the same primary email account at my j*b since 1991, tracking not only my w*rk, but also my professional life (conferences and organizations and research, etc.) and even a good deal of my personal life (since back in the day, folks only had one email address, if that many). I know I'm a bit of a digital packrat, but what can I say? It's been my memory for over half my life, documenting interactions and achievements with colleagues and coauthors and confidants for decades.

Well, the Company says that they have a policy against "bulk export of email", so except for what I choose to forward manually, one at a time, to my personal email account, I've got to leave all of that behind. Trying to determine the few to save from 30 years of stuff just fills me with despair. It feels like trying to dig the Panama Canal with a teaspoon.

Am I being a fool? Do you just learn to move on and let go of such memories?

- Skeptic

Since I was a lame duck after announcing my retirement (60 days ahead in order to get pension & 50/50 retiree insurance set up), I was able to sort out the important contact info & send any emails to my personal address. I also used those days to talk individually with people I wanted to be friends with after I left- previous lunch buddies. Of 7 women, I'm still in touch with 4 of them. The only male I reached out to was my previous line manager (and his family after he tragically died), who preceded my dive into retirement by about 2 years- and we only talked a handful of times. Our longest call was the day I put in my notice- I was so very happy to leave what had become a ridiculously stressful career in corporate treasury & credit!

I was only too happy to divest myself of relationships that I didn't value any longer.

 

[JoeWras]

Unless your IT department is incredibly talented they will not notice you copying some pst files. Get an Outlook viewer and you are all set to retrieve any old email.

Yes. It would seem pretty straightforward to just open your browser to your personal Google drive and drag your *.pst file there. Then you can ignore it very easily for many years

Really, just leave your mail. You may have signed something in your NDA paperwork requiring you to. Leave it. Maybe copy a few key emails, that's it. You really don't want legal entanglements.

IT departments don't need to be talented. There is automated software that most companies deploy that look for copying and dragging of key file types. This software can also detect screen shotting or snap-clipping. No talent required. It is automatic, and will kick it out to a human for further analysis.

 

[Ronstar]

Let it go. After settling in retirement, you'll never have the need or want to go back to those emails.

At least that is how it was for me.

 

[Souschef]

Funny story-The standard gift upon retirement was a presentation clock! with a plaque listing your term with the company.
For a while I dutifully changed the battery, but finally said WTF? I have a digital clock in the same room

 

[Finance Dave]

That wouldn't not of bothered me. The few I really wanted I took and the rest is the past. What you don't have, you won't miss in a very short time. IMO

+1

Pick a reasonable number, maybe 50...and manually send them to yourself, then move on.