How and Why You Should Archive Your Emails
Find out how to easily manage your email inbox
What is Email Archiving?
Email archiving is the process of removing emails from your inbox to be stored in a separate yet easily accessible location. You can manage this manually or automatically depending on your preference, and you can easily search for mails that have been archived by date, contact, or keyword. The point of archiving is to give you a central location to store mails that you no longer need direct access to. It also ensures your inbox is kept clean and attachments and other files are kept safe.
However, there’s much more to email archiving than an empty inbox. In fact, for many people, archiving is a crucial component of better organization and transparent business practice. It has numerous benefits that far outweigh the very small inconvenience of clicking “archive”, and you’ll be surprised at how much simpler your email management will become once you get into the habit.
Why Should You Archive Your Email?
If you’re asking why archive emails, then there’s a few things to consider. First, what does archive mean for your email? Most people simply use the archive function when they want to clean up their inbox without deleting mail. This can be useful when you don’t want to sort old email but you can’t deal with it cluttering up your email inbox.
Other’s use the email archive function for more concrete reasons, such as legal compliance and protection or to ensure that data is not accidentally deleted or lost. Archiving allows important emails and attachments to be kept safe and secure in a separate folder, they can then be referred back to later or deleted from the email archive when no longer needed.
For more information on why we archive email and what archive means, take a look below at some of the benefits of and how it can help push your productivity to new heights through better email management.
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Cleaner Inbox That’s Easier to Manage
Perhaps the first and most obvious reason to start archiving your email is to help you take back control of your inbox. For many people, an inbox is essentially a to-do list, and the messier that list, the easier it is to overlook the important stuff. Once archived, the mail (or mails) will be removed from your inbox and placed in the archive folder. If you receive a reply to those mails at any time in the future, then they’ll be moved straight back to your inbox. It’s that simple. For freelancers and employees, archiving older projects is a great way to start, helping you to draw a line underneath work that is already completed. For CEOs and business owners, archiving everything from employee correspondence to supplier emails is part of best business practice.
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Never Lose Important Data
Today, we send more sensitive data and documents through email than ever before. That data literally covers every aspect of our lives, from personal medical records to professional contracts and invoices. Email archiving allows you to keep a record of everything sent and received, ensuring that you always have a copy of your messages and any documents attached. By archiving your important data and documents, they’re stored safely in a separate folder—meaning there’s less chance you’ll delete or lose them. Additionally, an easily accessible digital copy of your important data, particularly if you move between multiple devices, jobs, or countries, can be a lifesaver.
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Quickly Access Important Data
Keeping data safe is one thing, accessing that data when you need it in a hurry is quite another. Archiving emails essentially allows you to open your archive folder and easily find anything you need. Spike’s email search goes one step further, putting you in control of your archives and much more. Simply search by keyword or contact and you can instantly find what you are looking for. Additionally, when you’re away from your devices, you can also use Spike email app in your web browser and search your archives just like you would at home.
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Business Remain Compliant
Across a broad range of different industries, data security and retention are critical when it comes to regulatory compliance. Depending on your particular industry, there will be specific rules for email archiving compliance and how to store data and documents, however, keeping those messages handy is the underlying concept. Archiving your email allows you to store this data in a way that allows easy access and retrieval in its original format—making data compliance simple for your business.
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Protects Your Business from Potential Litigation
If the worst happens, and your business becomes involved in any type of legal proceedings, then email archiving also provides a fall-back for what is known as litigation discovery. If data from emails and attachments is not easily retrieved, i.e. you have deleted it, then the process of retrieving that data from other sources can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. Archiving email over the course of your business operations puts everything you need (or might need) within easy reach.
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How to Archive Emails
If you’re asking how to archive emails in Spike, then you’ll be pleased to know its super simple and lightning fast. You can archive both single mails and multiple mails with a single click or tap, and it’s as easy to do on your desktop as it is your smartphone.
On your desktop, simply right click on the email (or select multiple mails) and then select archive. On your smartphone, simply swipe left and then select archive. If for any reason you make a mistake, you can simply click undo and your mails will be returned to your Inbox. See more information on how to archive emails with Spike.
Here, we look at how to archive emails in Spike and using other platforms in a handy table:
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Platform
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Desktop
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Mobile
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Spike |
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Yahoo |
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Apple Mail |
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Where to Find Your Archived Emails
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
In most cases, you’ll find your archived emails within a dedicated folder marked Archive. For some apps, you will need to set this folder up beforehand, however this is rarely difficult and you can simply follow the instructions given.
If you’re trying to find archived emails in Spike, simply click your avatar in the top left corner of the app and you will see all of your additional folders such as Archive. Check here for more information on where to find your archived emails.
Discover the power of the most modern email and see how easy it is to archive using Spike, download the app today. Check out the blog for the latest updates on productivity, creativity, and collaboration here.
FAQ on Archiving Email
The term “archive” refers to a collection of historical documents, records, or other materials that are preserved and stored for future reference and research. Archives can include physical objects like books, photographs, and letters, as well as digital materials like emails, videos, and databases. The purpose of archiving is to preserve and provide access to valuable information and knowledge, often for academic, cultural, or legal reasons.
The number one reason for email archiving is to keep your inbox clean and free of distractions. However, email archiving can also be used to ensure important emails don’t get deleted, to keep records of communications that may be needed later, and to keep documented proof of specific conversations or files that have been sent and received. Archiving email may also be important for legal compliance in certain industries, as well as protecting you from potential legal issues.
An email archive is usually a separate folder found within your email client. Here, any email that you archive can be stored and referred to again when you need it. However, there are other methods of email archiving, such as those used with large servers. Often, these are taken care of automatically, sending raw data to a server that is dedicated to archiving emails and other files.
You can usually archive emails with just a single click and, depending on the particular software you are using, this is often found using the right click option of your mouse or within the drop down menus. Archiving is supposed to be quick and simple, so ensuring you have easy access to your archiving features is important.
Usually, your email archive is found alongside your other email storage folders such as “sent”, “spam”, and “drafts”, however, this depends on the app or software you are using. When you enter this folder, you will see all the emails you have archived, usually sorted by the date in which they were sent/received or which you archived them. This means it should be easy to find specific emails by date, however, you will usually also have the option to search using a keyword or email subject.
In Gmail, “Archive” is a feature that allows users to remove an email from their inbox without deleting it entirely. When an email is archived, it is moved to a separate folder called “All Mail,” where it can still be searched for and accessed in the future if needed. Archiving an email in Gmail helps to declutter the inbox and makes it easier to find important messages later on. Additionally, archived emails can be automatically deleted after a certain period of time has passed, according to the user’s preferences.
The future of email is here,
are you ready for it?
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