Should I Save or Archive All My Emails?

If you’re wondering, “What is archiving?”, “What does archiving an email do?” or “Should I archive all my emails?” we have some answers that can help you decide for yourself whether archiving may be a better option when it comes to keeping everything organized.

To archive or not to archive: that is the question. Before we get too deep into whether you should save emails by organizing them into folders or archive them, you might have questions about the difference between saving and archiving.

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First things first, to save an email somewhere other than your inbox, you can move it to a designated folder, created by you. Let’s say that you get emails from different organizations that you want to keep—you would create individual folders for each. Archiving your emails sends them all to the same place: your archive. An archived email is removed from your inbox and saved in a separate folder entirely. This way, it’s out of your way but not deleted, so you can get to it at a later date as needed.

There are pros and cons to both saving and archiving emails, so let’s take a look at them all:

• Pros of saving emails. If you love to have a place for everything and everything in its place, saving emails is for you. Folders make it easy to keep your mailbox neat and orderly. Searching for emails by folder helps to limit search results within your mailbox so you can more efficiently find a message you need. You can also establish rules within your mailbox to automatically send messages to specific folders as you receive them. Setting up mailbox rules can help to keep your inbox free of clutter without spending any extra time moving messages to their designated folders.
• Cons of saving emails. Saving emails requires you to put thought into where you’re going to send an email and put forth the extra effort moving it. While it’s not going to take 30 minutes a day to sort and move emails from your inbox to the right folder, it can take more time than archiving everything.
• Pros of archiving emails. Archiving is the dream of anyone who feels they have better things to do than sort and organize emails throughout the day. You can easily achieve inbox zero status with the tap of a single button—without any second thoughts about where they should or will go. You’ll never accidentally delete an email you might need in the future, and your inbox stays tidy and organized.
• Cons of archiving emails. Archiving is equivalent to shoving everything under the bed and calling the room clean. No, there’s not anything on the floor, but it’s not exactly orderly and put away. To find an email that’s been archived, you need to use the search bar, which is similar to how it would be if you left it in your inbox.

When it comes to organizing your inbox, it’s up to you to decide what works. You can take the ultra-organized approach by putting every email in a folder where it belongs—or quickly sending it to your archive for access later. Be sure to check out other email organizing hacks, like how to create calendar events or eye-catching signatures, or when to use encryption, how to manage spam, change your email address, and more.