Rather than archiving every single email you get, try deleting the ones you don't care about. You'll free up space, and you won't have to pay to store useless emails. If an email is important, archive that one—or consider placing it into a folder or label that will make it easier to find in the future.
Should you delete old emails? Yes, it will free space for new important messages, attachments, and files. Deleting old messages will also help keep your inbox clean and organized.
Deleting Emails Is Best For
When you need to clean up your free storage with Gmail – even though they offer 15GB (but that's across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos). Deleting old and unread emails is a great way to claw some of this storage back.
Essentially, saving emails is a way of deluding themselves into thinking they'll get around to addressing them all. Rutledge also posits that deleting emails feels too risky for savers. "Some people save read emails for the sense of security it gives to believe they could find stuff if they needed to," she says.
Email retention periods vary considerably for different data types. Most federal and state email retention laws require email data to be retained for between 3 and 7 years, although there are exceptions and certain types of data may have do be retained for much longer, even indefinitely.
Emails can take up tons of space on your Android operating system. If you keep thousands — or even hundreds — of emails around, then it's time that you clear a significant amount of space by deleting these emails in Gmail.
Searching for emails older than 10 years: Type "10 years" in the From: field, followed by hitting enter. Then select Search Messages Older Than from the menu bar above. Scroll down until you see 2016 and click Go.
Regularly deleting emails is good practice as it ensures that your inbox doesn't get too clogged up with junk mail or old emails that you no longer need. For security reasons, it's also recommended that you delete emails from people you don't know.
Email archiving is the process of securely storing emails, making it easy to search for and retrieve them. It's a fast, reliable, and scalable solution to storing essential emails while reducing the load on mail servers. It helps store old emails that you don't need immediate access to, but don't want to delete.
Deleting removes emails from your inbox. It does save up space, but you won't be able to ever again access your emails. This puts you at risk both in financial and legal terms. You won't be able to produce evidence for ediscovery and litigation.
Set up a temporary folder for all those unread emails.
The goal is not to throw all of that back email away, but to get it out of the inbox and know what a clean inbox feels like. Set deadlines to slog through the folder of back email. At the same time, ensure your clean new inbox is empty at the end of each day.
Archiving emails is usually the better option
This allows you to keep a record of all past correspondence and makes it easier to find specific information when you need it. Deleting emails can lead to data loss and make it more difficult to retrieve information down the line.
Digital data storage and transmission systems operate 24/7, with a more or less constant base load of energy, even when not in use. Regardless of whether the email is sent or not, networks would use about the same amount of energy.
Whether you delete or archive an email message, it disappears from your inbox. A deleted message goes into the trash folder, but an archived message is defaulted to the Archive folder or All Mail on Gmail / Google Apps.
Email archiving allows you to keep a record of everything sent and received, ensuring that you always have a copy of your messages and any documents attached. By archiving your important data and documents, they're stored safely in a separate folder—meaning there's less chance you'll delete or lose them.
We recommend that you use the Archive feature to keep your Inbox clear of messages that you've already answered or acted on. Think of the Archive like a file folder. You can store items in the Archive folder and still access them easily.
Messages you archived aren't deleted, and you can access them at any time. Gmail keeps your archived emails indefinitely or until you delete them. Only messages that are deleted are removed from the Trash after 30 days. How do I retrieve archived emails?
Deleted emails reappearing sounds like you might have some corruption going on with Inbox. Move all wanted emails out of Inbox and put them in a suitably named folder for storage. Delete anything you do not want. When Inbox is empty: Right click on Inbox and select 'Compact' Empty and then compact the 'Junk' folder.
They've probably just been archived (Inbox label removed). They'd be in the "All Mail" label, and can be moved back to the Inbox if you want.
How far back does Gmail keep emails? Gmail can keep emails indefinitely. However, your individual email messages may be deleted after 2 years of inactivity. If your account (across all Google products) exceeds 15GB, you'll be unable to receive new emails.
If you go over your storage quota: You can't upload new files or images to Google Drive. You can't back up any photos and videos to Google Photos. Your ability to send and receive email in Gmail can be impacted.
Check the Sent folder or any other folder you think may contain emails you can delete. Regular emails do not take up a lot of space.
When you delete a message, it stays in your trash for 30 days. After that time, it will be permanently deleted from your account and can't be recovered.