Email has become a fundamental tool for almost everyone. We are all more than used to continually receiving emails of all kinds, so it is very important to keep our inbox tidy. Therefore, it is crucial that we get rid of unnecessary emails and, for that, we basically have two tools: archive and delete . We tell you the differences between the two.
Both processes are different, but both have a fairly clear mission: to reduce the number of emails in our inbox. Normally, we use each of these tools for certain emails, but both are equally valid.
Differences between archiving and deleting emails
As we have said before, with both ways we are removing emails from our inbox, but in a totally different way. If we archive an email, it will stay in its own section of archived emails. In this way, the mail remains stored, and we can consult it whenever we want . All mail services do not have the same system to view these archived emails. Outlook, for example, has its own folder of archived emails, but to see them in Gmail we must select the All mail option.
This system has a big drawback, which is that, despite not being in the inbox, these archived emails continue to consume space . Most free email services do not have a large amount of space, so we do not want to have too many archived emails if we do not want to run out of storage soon. In the event that you have many archived emails, it may be convenient for you to download them and store them on your computer.
On the other hand, when it comes to deleting emails, we will also be removing emails from the inbox. However, this time the deleted emails will end up in a folder known as Trash or Deleted Items, depending on the service we are using. In this sense, the emails will only be stored in it for a limited time , and once this has elapsed they will disappear forever.
Most email services have a deadline of 30 days to completely delete emails and, as we say, once this time has elapsed we cannot recover them in any way. There are some services like Google Workspace that allow you to recover these deleted emails forever, but unfortunately, it is a paid service and only the administrator of it could recover the emails.
So which one is better?
Seeing how the process of each of these methods to remove emails from our inbox is, one might think that it is best to archive, but nothing is further from the truth. If we decide to archive all the emails that we do not want, we will quickly run out of space in our mail service and, in addition, it will be much more difficult to find emails in the meantime .
On the other hand, deleting emails is a definitive solution that can save space in our email. Also, even by sending the emails to the trash, we will have a fairly long period of time to recover them in case we have made a mistake. Now, we must bear in mind that despite the fact that this time limit is quite broad, once it runs out, we will lose the emails forever .
Which is better? The most interesting thing we can do is archive only those emails that we are sure we are going to need and delete all the others from our inbox.