So THAT’s The Difference Between Archiving And Deleting Emails

When you’re inundated with emails from colleagues, clients and friends every day, you face an important choice: Do I archive or delete that message?

Both actions can easily be done in your inbox, but you might want to consider the key differences between each option.

If you delete an email, it doesn’t typically disappear right away. Usually, the message will get rerouted to your inbox’s trash folder. Your deleted messages will be permanently deleted from that folder, typically after 30 days, depending on your email provider policy or your company’s retention policies.

Whereas if you decide to archive an email, this will reroute that email to a different, less-visible folder. These emails will be archived indefinitely, unless you have enabled an auto-deletion setting in your inbox, like Gmail offers some users. This way, the email is no longer visible in your main inbox, but you can still use the search bar to look up the contents of that email for as long as your emails are archived.

For example, in Gmail, after you archive messages, you can still find these emails under the label “All Mail” that’s located as a label on the left side of your inbox. For Outlook, you can select the Archive button in the inbox toolbar to move older messages to a default storage folder.

Now that you know the difference between archiving and deleting, learn the best strategies of when to deploy each option. HuffPost asked two productivity experts about how they decide when to delete and archive the emails they get every day:

Consider deleting messages that are no longer relevant to your schedule and will not be missed. Time management coach Anna Dearmon Kornick said newsletters, sales promotions and automated alerts like “Your bank statement is available” go straight to the trash “because that information is accessible elsewhere or simply not worth keeping.”

Similarly, productivity coach Rashelle Isip said she deletes messages that are no longer time-relevant.

“If I receive a marketing email from an office supply store with a sales flyer for a 24-hour sale, and either I’m not interested in the sale or the 24-hour deadline has passed, I’ll delete that message,” she said as an example. “The information has been delivered and the message is no longer relevant.”

But when it comes to anything related to clients or collaboration with other business owners, Kornick always archives those messages. Kornick said this was a lesson she learned early in her career where she needed to reference past email threads to “cover her tracks.”

“If there’s even a small chance I’ll need to refer back to the conversation, I archive it,” she said. “For example, an email confirming a deadline, sharing feedback, or recapping a call is saved so I can easily search and reference it later.”

“My rule of thumb is simple: If the information is stored somewhere else or has no future value, delete it,” Kornick continued. “If it documents a decision, conversation, or expectation ― even just a sentence ― archive it.“

Especially in high-pressure environments like corporate offices, the emails you receive and send serve as important documentation of promises and expectations you have discussed. Don’t lose your advantage by automatically deleting them.

So the next time you open your inbox, take a few extra seconds to reflect on what you consider archive-worthy, or what should get automatically deleted.

“Having a game plan in mind can be helpful as it can make message processing more efficient,” Isip recommended.