What are you gaining exactly by “archiving”
I used to manage an inbox with 0 unread messages but gave up years ago, and now have more than 40000 most of which aren’t much use (spam, companies trying to flog stuff, invitations to conferences with zero relevance to my work etc). I archive stuff over a year old, then delete the archives after 5 or 7 years (depending on which account - determined by GDPR). The main reason for archiving is habit (we used to have crap quotas), but the reason for pruning is because even with good metadata searching, things will slow down eventually if there is too much stuff to index. To make things easier, all emails from specific addresses have rules applied that highlight them in my inbox.
Gmail, in fact Google Workspace.
I sort of used it personally but never properly. I then moved my business to Google and saved £1M.
I had the same training I organised for the masses and OMG my life was transformed. Combine a powerful search and the ability to multiple tag that look like folders. My mail problems of 15 years disappeared in a flash.
My mail work tool is now a Chromebook, its a bloody dream
I keep current year in my inbox and normal sent folders. At New Year I create 2 folders called sent 2021, and received 2021 and move everything to these folders. It's cathartic to start the new year fresh. After 3 years I delete the oldest years folders as the info in them will be out of date. Has worked for me for the last decade or so.
For work Outlook I skim through and flag anything that needs attention (now or in 3 months time).
I mark as read anything I’ve finished with and rarely delete anything. It’s pointless filing them as the search function is so good.
Every now and then I sort by flag and start at the bottom and unflag anything no longer worthy/finished with.
I aim to have an inbox of max 100 ‘unread’ (Currently 133). If it gets too high I’ll hammer it back to 20-30 ‘if I leave these a while longer maybe they’ll go away’
I’ve just looked at my own (work) mailbox and its total size, going back 15 years and with me rarely deleting anything other than junk and mailing list bobbins, is 12GB. Which might sound a lot but, I have more storage than that on my keyring. It’s not 2002 any more, there’s no need to juggle mail into cold storage to save space because your mailbox allocation is 100MB.
Space isn't the reason to archive. It's company data retention policy.
Anything in your inbox that reaches 6 my months with us is deleted.
For work I’m still in the habit of every new year chucking everything in inbox and sent into a folder for that year so I start at zero but have it if I need it. In the old days I’d run it off into a pst to save space but mailbox sizes now and smarter ost caching mean there’s no need.
Flag if it needs a response or action, clear when done. Although your mailbox is a terrible way to manage tasks so anything more than a few mins and it gets put in a task list elsewhere.
Gmail for personal I just star if it’s something I need to do/reply, I have a couple of labels for things like tickets, else I just search if I need it. Do a mass “mark as read” every week or so. Although with nearly 18 years(!) worth I’m bumping into the 1gb limit and the big attachments have already been dealt with so I should probably spent some time mass deleting the irrelevant stuff.
Space isn’t the reason to archive. It’s company data retention policy.
Nonsense. My Inbox goes back 15 years. That data is well and truly retained, likely more than double what any standards may require.
Anything in your inbox that reaches 6 my months with us is deleted.
That's just idiotic. Your reason to archive is nothing to do with data retention and everything to do with a pointless company policy. "Your data in folder A will be automatically deleted unless you move it to folder B."
For work I’m still in the habit of every new year chucking everything in inbox and sent into a folder for that year so I start at zero but have it if I need it. In the old days I’d run it off into a pst to save space but mailbox sizes now and smarter ost caching mean there’s no need.
Precisely. Habit.
I've spent half my life pissing about with .PST files because someone's Outlook profile had inevitably shat itself. The first thing I did when we migrated from on-prem Exchange to O365 was dump every last item back onto the server and have my .PST taken out back and shot with extreme prejudice. Best thing I ever did from a productivity point of view.
Why are you still doing it? You said yourself, "habit". Instead of knowing where an old email is (it's in your inbox) you're now going "well, it might have been in 2020... or 2019..." and for what? You're putting in extra admin time to make things more awkward.
It.
Is.
Pointless.
Stop it.
Come the revolution... 😁
You know, my girlfriend does this. She is a serial stuffer-of-things-in-cupboards and it drives me ****ing insane. There are at least four places in this house which may contain lightbulbs. Anti-bac wipes (another of her bloody obsessions, there is very definitely no bacteria on our glass coffee table, though it is a big smeary mess 90% of the time; if she ever decides to 'clean' the Big Daft Telly™ that cost me a fortnight's salary she's going in the Calder) are never in the same drawer / cupboard twice. I complain and she goes "why do you get to dictate where things go, it's my house too!" and she's right but, I really couldn't give a shit, just pick one and stick to it. I don't want to go on a treasure hunt every time I need a goddamn bin liner.
Pointless
One thing I do seem to have learned (annoyingly) is archive on Gmail and archive on 365 are not quite the same thing. On 365 you have to actively go search in there (and I don't think the search tools are as good). With Gmail a search goes deliving in there simultaneously by default. It means it's effectively just an extension of your inbox that you can't see my default. To my mind at least making your inbox your 'active to deal with box' makes sense. My mind likes that.....when I get there.
The more I procrastinate on this the more I prefer Google to 365
An aside - serial keepers of everything......if there are emails in there with personal details that are no old long forgotten emails no longer needed I'm assuming that's breaking gdpr.
GDPR applies to organisations, not individuals.
For corporate email though, that's a very good point. One could probably claim 'legitimate interest' or 'consent' perhaps? I shall have a conversation next week.
One could probably claim ‘legitimate interest’ or ‘consent’ perhaps?
But you'd be talking bollox. You'd be talking too lazy to note which emails contain gdpr material before allowing them to pile up I suspect. Millions of work email accounts must be stuffed full of it though.