Thursday, March 03, 2005
Fine wines and some actors get better with age. E-mail doesn't. Its primary purpose is immediacy. As your messages get older, they lose immediacy and their associated value. You may determine a cutoff point of 30, 60, or 90 days. When an e-mail reaches that age, just delete it. Or archive and then delete it.
The concept of archiving should be part of any e-mail organization campaign. Most e-mail is of no value after a short time. (Some e-mail is of no value before you even get it.) You may need to keep other e-mail, however, for historical purposes. Archiving comes in handy here.
Most e-mail clients include some facility for archiving your messages. Archiving capabilities are typically date based, which means you can automatically archive messages that are older than a particular date. For example, Outlook allows you to configure its AutoArchive capabilities in the following manner:
Choose Tools, Options.
On the Other tab, click the AutoArchive button.
Use the controls in the dialog box to specify how you want archiving performed by Outlook. If you get an average amount of e-mail, archiving every two weeks (the default) should be sufficient. You should make sure the other settings result in moving older items to the archive folders and deleting them from your regular inbox area.
Click OK twice to close all the dialog boxes.
Some online e-mail systems limit the amount of e-mail you can archive. If you try to surpass the storage limit, the system may either delete your oldest messages or start refusing to accept new e-mail. The upshot is to not allow your archive folder to become a catchall. Make sure you periodically clean it out.
The concept of archiving should be part of any e-mail organization campaign. Most e-mail is of no value after a short time. (Some e-mail is of no value before you even get it.) You may need to keep other e-mail, however, for historical purposes. Archiving comes in handy here.
Most e-mail clients include some facility for archiving your messages. Archiving capabilities are typically date based, which means you can automatically archive messages that are older than a particular date. For example, Outlook allows you to configure its AutoArchive capabilities in the following manner:
Choose Tools, Options.
On the Other tab, click the AutoArchive button.
Use the controls in the dialog box to specify how you want archiving performed by Outlook. If you get an average amount of e-mail, archiving every two weeks (the default) should be sufficient. You should make sure the other settings result in moving older items to the archive folders and deleting them from your regular inbox area.
Click OK twice to close all the dialog boxes.
Some online e-mail systems limit the amount of e-mail you can archive. If you try to surpass the storage limit, the system may either delete your oldest messages or start refusing to accept new e-mail. The upshot is to not allow your archive folder to become a catchall. Make sure you periodically clean it out.
