Comments on: Archive?

By: Vaibhav

Vaibhav — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:38:10 +0000

I have a totally different view point. Archiving (or keeping it in the inbox is oK). I am against keeping everything:
http://blog.gadodia.net/gmail-9-reasons-not-to-archive-messages/

By: J. Hunt

J. Hunt — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:01:42 +0000

After reading all the comments I’m still with the people who just leave everything in there inbox. I get way too much mail to file it away every day - leaving it in the inbox and searching for it is still what makes most sense, otherwise I’d be creating new auto-filtering rules almost every day.

If you’re taking the time to clear your inbox every day, maybe you’ve just got too much time on your hands ;-)

Asking why to archive rather than leave everything in your inbox is like asking why anyone would put books on a bookshelf or clothes in a wardrobe/closet rather than have them spread out on your floor.

Well, a closer analogy as I see it is asking why you would have a two functionally identical wardrobes, except use one for clothes that you’ve recently bought and another for clothes that you’ve had for a while. Why not just keep everything in one wardrobe, especially when they’re already ordered?

By: dave

dave — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:24:48 +0000

clean inbox = clean mind ?

I think its more like:

If you need a clean inbox to clear your mind -> use archive. That is google’s philosophy, but not mine.

Personally I don’t use my email as my todo, or calendar or anything like that. My email is more like my telephone. I am only concerned with “the now”. And since all my emails are sorted by date, I don’t need to archive them to know that the ones at the top are the only ones I need to be interested in.

Google’s in the wrong business if they want to clear our minds. I just want to see today’s email.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:31:03 +0000

I think a lot of the early commentators on this post missed this part of the 9 reasons:

clean inbox = clean mind

Asking why to archive rather than leave everything in your inbox is like asking why anyone would put books on a bookshelf or clothes in a wardrobe/closet rather than have them spread out on your floor.

By: Partha

Partha — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:09:51 +0000

I archive because of this reason.

There are generally a couple of emails I don’t ever open. I archive those (I don’t think I deleted any email in the recent past) so that I can keep track of how many new messages I get in a day.

If I leave those emails in my inbox I would never know. I would have 300 new emails for example but 295 of those would be older messages I don’t care about, when I archive I know I have exactly 5 new messages - not really a big deal, but I’ve gotten used to it and it helps keep my inbox organized.

By: Daniel Schildt

Daniel Schildt — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:47:25 +0000

Reason why you should archive instead of keeping all of your mail in Inbox is that it helps you to more easily focus on important messages that need your attention longer. Combining that to good use of tags is another way to arrange your emails to different “boxes”. Usually I add labels like “TODO” to items that contain some things that should be done and/or label message as “Links” if it contains some good ones. You should learn to create filters to automatically label (and/or archive) things based of content so that it keeps email more organized and easier to manage.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:56:36 +0000

@ Christine - you can use labels to organise your mail into your own categories. Then you can either leave the mail showing in your inbox (where the labels will also show up) or you can archive and only see the mail when you click on the label name.

That said, I have no clue why archiving is that much better than leaving stuff in your inbox. I skip my inbox for some things, where I just need a record but not to see each email as it comes in (like code commit alerts for my coding projects), but my regular mail just sits in my inbox. Unless it would make it quicker to load?

By: Mike A

Mike A — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:33:44 +0000

I think that article was geared towards people who delete their emails. I don’t think archiving is much different than leaving the emails in the inbox.

As for folders, why not just make good use of tags? They provide the same functionality as folders.

By: Pratap Chatterjee

Pratap Chatterjee — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:24:19 +0000

Google does not explain whether archived mail will be taken into account for calculating the storage limit.

By: chrissowick

chrissowick — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:19:56 +0000

Seems like everyone here is asking the same thing I am about this “9 reasons to archive”: How is that different than what I’m already doing? What is functionally different about archiving vs leaving all 11000 emails in my inbox?
9 reasons not to delete, sure, but who deletes stuff that’s not spam? Also this idea of filing emails in folders is new to me, what purpose does that serve when you can just do a search? Are the folders for like, when you’re not looking for something in particular but just want to browse through old email? I don’t get it. Who has the time to sort their email into freakin’ categories anyway? I don’t even have time to read all of it!