Email - to delete or not to delete?

[davethesailor]

I currently have 2921 email sitting in my hotmail inbox. I get a load of junk and deleting is a constant process. Sometimes I have a good clear out and I was going to have another, but then thought, "what's the point"?

As far as I can tell my inbox capacity is pretty much unlimited.

So was just wondering, what do you do? Do you delete the chaff and keep the important stuff?

In a nutshell, is your box bulging?

[Philipnet]

I have a bulging box!
I have email going back to 1998 - my second year at uni and the second Linux machine I built.

Most of my email is there for reference or posterity - you know all those joke emails that get sent around . Some of it is neither and is just spam/crap, but it hard to wade through it all. As storage gets cheaper it's easier just to leave it there.

My management system is to read everything that comes into my inbox and mark everything that needs later review. I have a filter that just shows me everything I've marked, and I can unmark each item once processed.

[Captain Tancredi]

When I go back to work after a holiday I tend to have a double-sifting system, so first of all I weed out everything that's obviously out of date (like the week-old "there are buns on the desk next to me because it's my birthday" and so on) then a second sift to pull out everything I actually need to keep.

As far as my Hotmail account is concerned, I set up about half a dozen folders with separate ones for family, friends, Ebay and Amazon sales, travel and so on, and get in the habit of filing new emails as they come in and I deal with them.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I try to have a good clear out every so often. It just becomes a nightmare otherwise.

[Phillip Culley]

I have email going back to 1998 - my second year at uni and the second Linux machine I built.

First year at uni, surely?

I've got stuff lingering from 1998 back when I started university and got an e-mail address of my own...

Generally my feeling is that if it's something personal, or something I might need in the future then I'll keep it, if not then it's wiped. And despite that, my Outlook folders are claiming to have almost 600MB of e-mails...

[Alex]

I tend to keep only the latest emails from friends and family, and anything else that might need to be kept goes in one misc. folder, so my email folder in general looks pretty tidy.

I have to say I hardly ever get emails these days though, as apart from family everyone else uses Facebook or private messaging on forums to chat with me. Still, I suppose it's pretty much the same thing...

[Rob McCow]

I have to say I hardly ever get emails these days though, as apart from family everyone else uses Facebook

That's very true, a lot of stuff that used to go round by email now gets done on Facebook.

For me, the most important use of email now is to keep track of purchases and subscriptions. I'm on a few mailing lists but not too many.

I screen my emails occasionally, doing a search for 'savacenter' or 'play.com' and deleting the lot. It's an easy way to get rid of a few hundred emails very quickly!

[Si Hunt]

My Inbox doubles as my 'to do' pile - if something's in there, then it represents a job to do. For example, a birthday reminder e-mail means I still have to send a card off, an e-reminder for a bill means the amount needs recording on my accounts spreadsheet, a message needs replying to etc. Anything in my Inbox that's finished with gets immediately filed on one of 50 or so folders if it needs keeping - so anything to do with money, including receipts for on-line purchases, goes in the "Receipts" folder, anything to do with audio plays goes into a folder for the relevent play (in case I need to refer back to it and retrieve synopsis and things later). All except for receipts for things that haven't yet arrived, which stay in my Inbox again to remind me to chase them up if they don't come. Social/chit chatty e-mails and anything I'll never need again get deleted, unless they are special/significant e-mails or friends, who have their own folder.

That's the system that works for me, as it means when I log on I can see immediately anything that still needs attending to. But to answer the original question, yes space on free e-mail providers is now unlimited so I never clear out things I've filed that I no longer need, because there's simply no point.

Si.

[Stuart Wallis]

The spam goes immediately; some stuff from friends I hang onto for as long as possible; and there's a couple of folders that should have been cleared out yonks ago but I never have the time. Lord Lucan's probably buried in one of them.

[Larry]

I don't know what other network providers are like but with AOL, you are able to set up two seperate inboxes where all the spam and junk mail gose into one and normal e-mail into the other. The good thing with the spam box is I have a delete all button so I can delete everything in one hit. The only disadvantage of the spam inbox is that if there is something in it I want to keep I have to take a screen print as I'm not allowed to save anything in my spam into my saved mail box.

[Philipnet]

First year at uni, surely?

Damn it!
When I re-read (after posting it) I did realise that '98 was my first year at uni - but hoped that no one will pull me up on that

Unfortunately I'm having server problems (old motherboard and new kernels don't mix ) and so my email server is down. But after extensive checking, I have email back 2000 - which was my second year at Uni when I built my first Linux server

[Philipnet]

My Inbox doubles as my 'to do' pile - if something's in there, then it represents a job to do. For example, a birthday reminder e-mail means I still have to send a card off, an e-reminder for a bill means the amount needs recording on my accounts spreadsheet, a message needs replying to etc. Anything in my Inbox that's finished with gets immediately filed on one of 50 or so folders if it needs keeping - so anything to do with money, including receipts for on-line purchases, goes in the "Receipts" folder, anything to do with audio plays goes into a folder for the relevent play (in case I need to refer back to it and retrieve synopsis and things later). All except for receipts for things that haven't yet arrived, which stay in my Inbox again to remind me to chase them up if they don't come. Social/chit chatty e-mails and anything I'll never need again get deleted, unless they are special/significant e-mails or friends, who have their own folder.

OMG!

I can only dream of being that organised!!!

[Stuart Wallis]

I don't know what other network providers are like but with AOL, you are able to set up two seperate inboxes where all the spam and junk mail gose into one and normal e-mail into the other. The good thing with the spam box is I have a delete all button so I can delete everything in one hit. The only disadvantage of the spam inbox is that if there is something in it I want to keep I have to take a screen print as I'm not allowed to save anything in my spam into my saved mail box.

Yahoo allows that as well, except that their spam box needs checking as the odd non-spam finds its way there as well. Don't ask me how it's done. Anyway, I chuck out all the spam while I'm there as I've always had a thing about junk mail, whatever form it comes in - can't stand it, haven't people got better things to do with Earth's resourses than to bother me with ads for things I don't want?

[Larry]

Yahoo allows that as well, except that their spam box needs checking as the odd non-spam finds its way there as well. Don't ask me how it's done. ?

I've had that problem to you can understand when certain non spams end up in the spam box but it's a bit mystifying when every now and again a confermation of order/dispatche e-mail from Galaxy 4 or Reading FC. ends up in there.

[Stuart Wallis]

Mind you, I did have problems with Yahoo in that they suddenly started deleting completed messages sent from their Drafts box; very important problem when you need to refer back to work-related posts! I wrote to them saying why did you stop doing this? and they replied we never let you save completed e-mails in there in the first place, even though they had done since I'd started using them five years previously. These are the only problems I've had with them, but I now use Hotmail for business communiques and Yahoo for less important. Heigh-ho.