Keeping messages...

[LMC]

Inspired by this thread... - here's a nosy one

I used to keep thousands of e-mails. But in the last six months or so I've got brutal - clear out e-mails/PMs if I never re-read them, or they are out of date (e.g. making arrangements to meet next Friday - from May 1998), or they are the type of e-mails that shouldn't be re-read (i.e. ones from "love" interests where it's unhealthy to keep revisiting and trying to read between the lines for stuff that simply isn't there). So I'm a big fan of the delete key

E-mails, PMs - a regular clear out every so often is, IMO, good for the soul. As well as disk/server space

I do keep *some* - but most of them go in the bin after a couple of weeks.

Are you a keeper or a deleter? - and what sort of stuff do you keep?

[Baruch]

Originally Posted by LMC

Are you a keeper or a deleter? - and what sort of stuff do you keep?

I'm a deleter mostly, although I do keep a few emails if they're likely to be relevant or useful later. What's the point in cluttering up my hard disk with loads of read messages when they're no use any more?

[DavidY]

I'm a keeper.

[David Franklin]

Keeper. Just had a look, about 700MB of archived mail (I quite often get quite large work related attachments). But to put things in perspective, 700MB of HD space costs about 30p.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes being able to search for an email from 5 years ago has been a life saver...

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

Keeper. Just had a look, about 700MB of archived mail (I quite often get quite large work related attachments). But to put things in perspective, 700MB of HD space costs about 30p.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes being able to search for an email from 5 years ago has been a life saver...

I totally agree.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

Keeper. Just had a look, about 700MB of archived mail (I quite often get quite large work related attachments). But to put things in perspective, 700MB of HD space costs about 30p.

... plus, I trust, another 30p for the copies you have on CD, and offsite

I'm a keeper too.

[Asif]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes being able to search for an email from 5 years ago has been a life saver...

Or better still, an email with a funny attachment or joke....
BTW - I'm a keeper too!

[Aleks]

I'm a deleter.
Any useful info gained from emails/PMs etc gets edited then filed in the appropriate place - my brain!

[DianaS]

I'm a deleter too..

And I've just started deleting PMs that are too silly for words without even responding.

So any PMs on the vein of "so and so has joined the forum and is doing this What do you think "
or "do you know what so and so is doing" just goes in the bin!

Can't be arsed
Got a life

[LMC]

I confess, I'm a keeper for work stuff - agree that it can be a life saver

I had a system message telling me off this morning for overrunning the mail server limits and had to save some of it to the file server and delete it - must do some housekeeping sometime

[Piglet]

I'm a deleter in the main - although I like to keep special messages from special people

[jivecat]

I keep everything but never look at it.

[killingtime]

Keeper (surprised ). Disk space is cheap. Full text searching on a few thousand emails is quick and, even though I probably never will, I can reread some emails. I do delete social event emails but then I've probably copied the event into my calendar (if I could make it) so really I'm just replacing one long term storage with another. GMail offers over 2.5GB of space; it takes a lot of email (or big attachments) to fill that up.

[Dreadful Scathe]

Im a deleter of emails. Most work emails are nonsense - I keep the important bits in other documents and delete the rest. I try and keep my mail box to less than 30 emails. Email is badly misused in my opinion, I dont want to know that there are "cakes available downstairs" when Im working from home and the "downstairs" is the office in London . Although admittedly the last time it was at least funny, the IT bod had added "for those not in the office - balance the cost of travel down here to get the cakes against buying your own". Not that cakes are the issue, spurious emails are .

[stewart38]

Originally Posted by jivecat

I keep everything but never look at it.

I keep everything and look at 2% of it again

[Jazz_Shoes (Ash)]

Originally Posted by Piglet

I'm a deleter in the main - although I like to keep special messages from special people

[Dreadful Scathe]

Originally Posted by stewart38

I keep everything and look at 2% of it again

i'll bet its more like 3.5% !

[Rebecca]

This is when my hoarding tendencies just get out of hand. I have personal emails saved from who knows when, the administrator at work keeps telling me my mailbox is nearing full, and I'm almost brought to tears whenever I need to empty my text inbox

Ridiculous I know, but when I've been through hard times in the past it was really helpful to have a read through old messages from friends - a real pick-me-up.

I had an ex-boyfriend who was great at the deleting thing. Whenever he recieved a text he'd read it and delete it straight away. I have to admit being offended though when I'd spent time constructing the perfect message to convey my feelings, only for it to be deleted. Surely a few days in archive couldn't hurt

[bigdjiver]

Keeper. Big-time.

[under par]

deleter

get rid of the drivel.

work place e/mail don't even open most of it D E L E T E it get on with life.

Any really funny stuff or extremely personal store appropriately.