
Should you delete all emails you get while you are on holiday? - petenixey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23547802
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eksith
There was a time I deleted my emails while away from work, but after one
particular incident, I swore never to do it again.

I had gone to visit my folks and while away, an old friend had sent me an
email, which I deleted along with my regular cleanup. I came back to discover
he had passed away (aged 26) and the last message he sent was to me along with
an image of him in hospital. He had made arrangements with his family and we
had access to all his accounts, including email, and the photo itself was
still on his phone. So the message wasn't lost forever. But what if he hadn't?

After that, I decided to never delete anything unless I confirm it's of no
further use.

In fact, every message I've ever received, except for spam, has been backed up
on a local server, my laptop and the desktop as well as external USB(4) for
the last 2 years or so.

I doubt something like that will happen again, but some things don't feel
trivial though still intangible. Besides, storage is cheap (if we're not
talking hi-res images/video).

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mariuolo
That's why most people keep separate account for work and personal messages.

~~~
eksith
People don't always follow categories like that. I have quite a few addresses,
but he sent it to the one he remembered to type in and hoped I got it. I did,
but didn't keep it.

~~~
coliveira
My policy is never to reveal my work email to anyone other than coworkers and
business partners. I have changed jobs before and it is always a mess to get
rid of a job-related email accounts.

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ams6110
Another way to handle this is to forward all your work email to another
service, then if you change jobs that email simply stops, but you still have
all the history and any personal messages that might have gotten sent to that
address.

I know a few people who don't like using Outlook so they set up their work
email to autoforward to gmail and use that to handle their email.

~~~
keidian
Problem is, that is assuming that forwarding work email doesn't breach company
policy in some way which can open up even more issues :)

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jacquesm
I'm categorically against deleting any email. Email is a track record, a way
to prove stuff, a way to disprove stuff.

Deleting email can sometimes be construed as destruction of evidence. And
having email can sometimes win you court cases.

The only kind of email I delete is spam, everything else gets archived. Just a
heads up, in case anybody wants to send me self-incriminating email :)

~~~
sliverstorm
_Deleting email can sometimes be construed as destruction of evidence._

From what I know, the way this is addressed is through policy. For example,
company sets policy of retaining 3 months of email. Company follows this
policy. Then, email that is deleted that is more than 3 months old, is not
considered destruction of evidence.

Anyway, there's too much stuff that isn't spam but has only momentary utility
to keep everything. For example, automated notices are usually very high
volume and always no longer useful within 12 hours.

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gabemart
1) Wouldn't it be more correct to bounce all emails with an appropriate
message, rather than accept and then delete them?

2) I would be worried about automatically generated emails getting deleted. I
guess this depends on the type of email you receive, but if you ever receive
important emails generated by a machine, any kind of auto-delete feature seems
unwise.

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alan_cx
Never delete email. Never. Archive, of course, but never delete.

I have been in, and involved in, too many cases where old emails have been
crucial evidence in both minor and major ways, personally and professionally.

House keep, tidy, archive. But always have them ultimately available. Never
delete.

I'd say the same about paper work. Advantage with email is that its easier to
manage and store.

~~~
harrytuttle
I did this for years. From ccmail, to mbox, to maildir, to exchange.

Then one day I just deleted it all. I haven't missed it since. I keep my inbox
at zero. Everything goes into tickets and is actioned or is saved as a
document if required still and the rest goes in the bin.

In fact its been better for me. Less stress, less crap to backup, less
worrying about losing stuff, less window of opportunity if someone manages to
root my kit.

The best thing is that I've worked out things can wait.

~~~
alan_cx
Fair enough. Your choice.

Cant say I have ever found it hard or time consuming to let email
automatically archive. It just does it.

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vacri
You don't have to delete your email to 'not look at the backlog'. Just siphon
it off to a different folder.

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robomartin
Vacation? What's that.

Really, it isn't that hard to quickly scan emails while on a trip. No need to
reply. If you are running a business you have no choice. And, again, it really
isn't that hard. Part of it, in my opinion, is to systemize. For all of my
business email I use Outlook exclusively. I have twenty years of cleand-up
email (no spam, notices, etc) archived. This database has come in handy at
times. The key is organization. I have extensive filters and even custom VBA
code in place to organize and systemize email. I also run multiple instances
of Outlook simultaneously, one per business, each with it's own separate pst
file.

Incoming email gets sorted into relevant folders. For example, email from
employees, vendors, customers and hosting providers go into their own folders,
sometimes with additional granularity.

Stuff that is OK to delete --like notices-- goes into folders that get flushed
out every ninety days.

I also sort email into an "Unknown Sources" folder: If the sender isn't in my
address book they are an unknown source.

This and a few other tweaks makes it easy to manage email for more than one
business without having to spend tons of time manually sorting and parsing. I
have never in my life used automatic vacation response emails and can't
remember any instance of wishing I had.

Again, this is from the perspective of an entrepreneur. I know some of my
employees completely turn all company comms off during vacation. And that's
OK.

~~~
test-it
That's very nice, but realistically 99.9999% of people won't put this amount
of effort into their email.

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OrsenPike
I have pretty much always done this for mail I am just CC'd on while on
holiday for more than a couple of days. I don't auto delete email sent just to
me though. Works well and makes the return to the office a simpler task.
Anything I need to know about I am told about or copied in on the messages
that are important on my return. Much easier than going through 3,000+ emails
in the morning all the while getting told about the important things anyway.

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steven2012
10 years ago, one of the architects I worked with had an email message that
stated "I'm on vacation, and when I return, I will delete all emails I receive
during this time. If it's important, then please e-mail me when I return on
X." And he meant it. He really did delete everything and didn't bother reading
a single e-mail. If something really did need his attention, then people would
be motivated to contact him, and if some decision was made without his input,
then it didn't matter.

This is what happens when people get 200-300 emails a day, and I don't really
know of a better way to deal with it, rather than going through thousands of
emails when you return from a 2 week vacation.

~~~
hackula1
200-300 emails per day sounds like you need a better spam filter. If not that,
then an assistant or two. No one important enough to get 200 meaningful emails
per day should be spending their time reading most of it. Hire a VA and get
them to do it for ~10-15 dollars an hour and put a summary on your desk.

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mosselman
This seems like a valid approach, though in some cases it isn't very useful.
In some cases you get notes on meetings, etc. Lets assume that all of your
company's meetings are fruitful (haha) you'd maybe want the notes on the last
2 meetings you missed. You can replace 'meeting' here with some other
important announcement.

It would go a bit far to let some employee somewhere keep track of who has and
has not received which announcements yet.

Then again, one might wonder if e-mail is a valid medium for things like
announcements. Maybe a sort of in-house social network like at Deutsche Bank
(and other companies) is more suited for this purpose.

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jhandl
"This is your bank/IRS. There's a problem with you account/taxes. If you don't
respond by date X we'll close/fine your account/you. This is the only notice
you will get."

~~~
tobiasu
Not legal in sane jurisdictions. There is no guaranteed delivery of email.
Important stuff still needs to be sent by confirmed fax, or snail mail with
various options to confirm delivery to the recipient.

~~~
Too
Where do you draw the "important"-line? Most my (important) bills come in my
snail mail mailbox _without_ any confirmation to the sender. If i don't pay
them on time i get a delay fine. What's easier, pay the fine or try to prove
in court that you never received the invoice? Or worse, explaining that you
threw out all the mail you received during holidays?

Still, I agree, important messages through email should always be replied to
to confirm that you've got them.

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m_c
I provide a code word in my out of office message so that people can flag
things they want me to read but don't want to remember to resend in a few
week's time. e.g.

 _I 'm away until dd/mm and will not be checking email. If you would like me
to take action on or note something when I return please resend with [Action]
in the subject line. All other messages will be automatically archived._

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ww520
This is a good way to deal with emails while vacationing. I've often tempted
to just delete all emails after a vacation. The rational being that if it's
important, they will send it again. This sounds like a better approach. Let
them know ahead of time that emails during the time will be gone for good.
They can send again after the vacation if it's important for you to read.

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kennu
I often receive invitations to meetings that will take place after my
vacation, so it would seem pretty silly and arrogant to just delete them. And
of course there's a lot of other similar mail; small pieces of information
that will be relevant after the vacation.

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rotub
Personally I like this idea. If it's urgent it will come up again on return

~~~
martin-adams
But not necessarily if it's important

