How do we hold on to the email conversations with our friends and family? The answer is that you can archive your mail in a cloud-based system. If you’re looking for an explanation of how email archiving works, this article will give you all the information so you know exactly what it entails and if it’s something worth considering.
Email archiving is the process of storing all emails that have been sent and received in a central location. This allows users to search for emails at any time, without having to go through your inbox. Gmail and Outlook are two email platforms that offer this service.
Email archiving isn’t a new term. You probably have been noticing the archive button in your mailbox ever since you started using emails. Right? Yet, only a very few know what it is, what it does, and how it can prove to be a very useful tool in email management. Through this post today, I would share what email archiving is, when to use it, and what does archiving an email do in Gmail & Outlook?
What are emails that have been archived?
Please allow me to explain the notion in very basic words for those who are still unfamiliar with this phrase…
Illustration of Email Archiving
The procedure of archiving an email is to save it in a different place on your mail servers. Should the need arise in the future, the emails that have been stored may be simply accessed and searched.
You have three options when you get an email: keep it in your inbox, archive it, or delete it. When you choose archive, the email is moved from your inbox to a separate archive folder. This accomplishes two goals: first, it clears up your inbox, and second, it saves the email so it may be accessed later.
What is the best way to archive emails in Gmail?
Messages may be easily archived in Gmail. Anyway, let’s have a look at the stages involved…
For use with the desktop version of Gmail
- Go to mail.google.com to access your Gmail account.
- Open any email message in your inbox that you find distracting but that you don’t want to delete.
- You’ll see a box-like symbol with a downward arrow on the top bar. This is referred to as Archive.
- Simply click it, and your message will be removed from your inbox. It has been archived!
For Gmail on the go
- To access the message in your inbox, tap it.
- On the top bar, tap the Archive button.
Alternatively…
- Press and hold the email message you want to archive for a long time.
- On the top bar, tap the Archive button.
What happens to Gmail’s stored emails?
When you archive emails from your Gmail inbox, they are no longer visible in your inbox. They are, however, searchable and accessible in the same way as any other emails in your Gmail account.
It’s worth noting, though, that archived emails do not free up storage space on your Gmail account. These messages take up the same amount of storage space that they would have taken up in your inbox. In a word, archiving merely declutters your inbox while having no effect on your Google account’s storage capacity.
How do I search for emails that have been preserved in Gmail?
The archived emails may be found in Gmail’s ‘All Mail’ folder, which can be accessed from the left side navigation column. If you’re using the Gmail app on your phone, go to the ‘three-line’ navigation menu and scroll down to the ‘All Mail’ folder.
Archived emails may also be found in your Gmail web/mobile app’s search results. So, if you recall the contents of an archived email or even the sender’s email address, you may do a simple search to bring the email back to the surface.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if someone answers to an email that has been archived in Gmail, it will reappear in your main Inbox folder, ensuring that you don’t miss out on any essential discussions.
How long does Gmail save archived emails?
Archived emails are retained in your Gmail ‘All Mails’ folder until you remove them. Should the necessity arise in the future, you may view these emails at any time.
What is the best way to archive emails in Outlook?
The method for archiving emails in Outlook is identical to the one we used with Gmail. When emails are preserved on the Outlook desktop software, however, there is the extra benefit of saving storage space (more on this in the later part of this post)
For the Outlook online app and the Outlook mobile app
- Choose the email you want to save.
- Next to the delete button, tap the Archive button.
Unlike Gmail, which moves archived emails to the ‘All Mails’ folder, Outlook keeps them in a distinct ‘Archive folder’ that you can reach from the left side navigation bar.
Moving your messages to the Archive folder in the Outlook web/mobile client, similar to Gmail, does not lower the amount of your inbox capacity unless you remove those emails.
Outlook for Microsoft 365 / Outlook desktop app
The kind of email account set on your Outlook app determines how you may archive emails on the Outlook desktop client. For IMAP accounts, for example, you may either create a new Archive folder or choose an existing folder as an Archive folder. However, if you have an Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, or Exchange account, your Mail app will already have a default Archive folder that you can’t edit or remove.
Is it too difficult to understand these terms?
Let me explain things down for you in layman’s terms:
- IMAP accounts allow you to access emails stored on a distant server. Now, what exactly is a Microsoft Outlook remote email server? Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and other email accounts are all affected. IMAP may be used to set up all of these email accounts in Outlook.
- Exchange accounts – these are professional email addresses that use a domain name as the email server. [email protected] or [email protected], for example.
- Microsoft 365 account – This is the email address that was generated and supplied to you when you bought a Microsoft 365 membership.
Emails in Outlook.com and Exchange accounts should be archived:
- Choose the message you wish to save.
- On the top bar, click the Archive button.
You’ll need to make some changes to your Archive settings if you want to save some space in your Mailbox. Here’s how to go about it:
- Right-click on the Archive folder and choose Properties.
- Go to the Properties tab.
- Select ‘Archive this folder using these parameters’ from the AutoArchive menu.
- Select the criteria for how old the emails must be for AutoArchiving to work — (X Days/Weeks/Months)
- Then, under ‘Move old stuff to: C:UsersYourNameDocumentsOutlook Filesarchive.pst,’ choose ‘Move old items to: C:UsersYourNameDocumentsOutlook Filesarchive.pst’.
- Apply and then OK.
We are automatically relocating all old e-mails (older than X days/weeks/months) to a local Archive folder in the form of the Archive.pst file in the aforementioned settings. This file’s location and storage are limited to the PC on which Outlook is installed.
AutoArchiving IMAP accounts set in Outlook may be done in a similar way.
However, there are two disadvantages to this archiving approach. 1) You can’t view your archived emails from the online or mobile versions of Outlook since they’re saved locally on your PC. 2) Because your Archived Emails file (.pst file) is kept in a local storage area, it is vulnerable to any damage to your computer’s hard drive.
How can I recover emails that have been archived in Outlook?
There are two methods to recover achieved emails in Outlook, depending on how you preserved your emails:
1) If you used AutoArchive to archive the e-mails to your local PC storage, import the Outlook data file (in.pst format).
Click on the File tab, then navigate to ‘Open & Export’, and then select ‘Open Outlook Data File’.
2) If you archived your emails online using the web / mobile version of Outlook, you may find them in the ‘Archive’ folder in the left side navigation bar.
More e-mail advice:
Do you use email archiving as well?
How often do you utilize email archiving to keep your inbox organized? Please let us know what you think in the comments section below…
Email archiving is the process of preserving email messages for later retrieval. There are two types of email archiving: “Gmail” and “Outlook”. In Gmail, emails are saved in a folder called “Archive”. Out of all the features that Gmail has to offer, this is one of the most important ones. Reference: how to find archived emails in gmail on android.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the point of archiving emails in Gmail?
A: In order to prevent them from being automatically deleted, Gmail users have the option of archiving emails. This means that they will not be automatically removed if a user deletes all their emails.
Do archived emails take up space in Gmail?
A: Unfortunately, if you archive emails in Gmail on your computer then they will take up space. This is because of the way that Gmail archives them for users to access specific messages and not delete those email accounts.
What is the point of email archive?
A: An email archive is a PDF file that contains the emails you have sent and received over an extended period of time. This allows you to quickly search through past conversations or even find messages they may have deleted by searching them in the sent or deleted items folder.
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