how do you organise and archive your old emails?

[ginestre]

I'm tired of badly organised email, when I suddenly find that I need a mail I remember from two years ago but can't find it anyhow. So I thought I'd ask a general question before I try and organise my own. How do you organise and archive your old emails?

[n3tfury]

it's going to be different depending on what client or webmail you use for email. i use gmail and use labels for the most part.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6560

[23meg]

Most things automatically get filed into IMAP folders with filters I've set; few things drop straight into the inbox.

[Nonno Bassotto]

I don't. I use Evolution and the search feature of Tracker or Beagle when I want to find old mails.

[jespdj]

I'm tired of badly organised email, when I suddenly find that I need a mail I remember from two years ago but can't find it anyhow.
What software do you use for your e-mail? Doesn't it have a search function?

I use Gmail, because it's very convenient to be able to access your mail on any computer that has an Internet connection, and because Gmail is the best webmail software I've ever used. Ofcourse it also has a very good search function.

I try to delete old e-mail as much as possible.

[LaRoza]

Delete it. If it is something I may need later, like a reciept, I save it according to the store.

[50words]

I use some basic categories like Registration, Personal, Clients & Case-Related, etc. For the ones I don't need access to, I use an Archive folder with a folder for each year under it.

I archive things like Personal e-mails every year. If and when I start running out of space on my server (and if I don't want to upgrade), I will download the messages and keep them archived in a file on my computer.

There are a couple of utilities for Windows that I use to remove attachments in batches, but I haven't found anything similar for Linux, yet. If anyone knows of one, I'd love to hear about it.

[Phil Airtime]

80% of the emails I receive are either instant-delete crap like advertising and junk press releases or read-once mails like newsletters. Those get binned, never to be seen again. The important messages (ie. all those that are to me or a small group of people) get saved in my IMAP mailbox and can be accessed forever and a day, mainly via Evolution, but sometimes on the web.