How to delete archived emails in Gmail
Disclaimer: Protect Yourself!
Before you take even a single step towards archiving your emails, the first thing you need to do is back up everything. I am not in any way going to be responsible for a mistake that costs you your archive. Additionally, if you work for a company with an IT department or an individual who operates your mail server, you should be talking to them about the size of your PST and the speed of your Outlook. They know your configuration and they know how to help you. My instructions may not apply to custom environments.
Preparing to Archive
The first thing you want to do is know your data retention policies. Is archiving your email kosher, or are you going to get in trouble if there’s any barrier between you and your emails? Are you allowed to delete emails, whether or not they’re business critical? In a lot of companies, you have to keep emails around for a couple of years, but archiving them is fine. In some companies, you may be allowed to delete anything that’s not business related, like a newsletter, a spam email, or similar. Some may require you to keep everything indefinitely. Know your company policies!
If you’re allowed to delete emails, keep reading this paragraph. If not, skip ahead a bit. I highly recommend that, if you’re allowed to delete messages, you How to Change Language on Google Chrome delete anything you’re sure you won’t need. Newsletters, spam emails, personal emails you don’t need, light BS with your coworkers, meeting notifications, and anything that isn’t useful for a paper trail or business-critical in some way can be purged.
I know a lot of people have a hoarder mentality when it comes to emails. “But what if I need it later?” Chances are, you probably won’t. If you do, or if you legitimately think you might, don’t delete it. Some, though? You’ll never need that invite to Bob’s 4th of July party from 2012. You’ll never need that spam email about fake r0lexs. You’ll never need that newsletter from Slickdeals. Just get rid of them.
Deleted Folder on Outlook
Deleting isn’t archiving! Any mail you delete will be permanently removed. I’m only advocating deletion because it helps compress the size of your archives. The larger your PST file, the more annoying it is to move around and archive for the future.
Also, before you go into archiving anything, go into Outlook and find the Deleted Items folder. Anything you delete will be moved to that folder to sit. This is so you can recover something you accidentally delete. Empty the deleted items folder to remove anything in it. This still doesn’t fully delete it, though; you can still recover some deleted items from your mail server following these instructions.
Archiving Email
When you want to actually archive, you have two options. You can do a mail archive, or you can do a file archive.
Adding emails to a mail archive is basically pulling them out of your usual folders or inbox and putting them in a special archive folder. Archived emails are simply out of sight; they don’t reduce the size of your PST file, nor do they speed up Outlook or its search. It’s for organization, nothing more.
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