You probably know that you have to hang onto certain paper documents for a given number of years. These documents are required by law, and only after a certain number of years of retention can you get rid of them. The same applies to email, though, which has been used in court cases. But how long do you have to keep the email from Great Aunt Edna talking about the snowstorm? That’s where setting up an email retention schedule comes in. You can clean your old email with email retention policies.
I get a lot of email every day. If I didn’t delete most of it outright, I would have overrun my email capacity years ago. But there are some things I need to hang on to for various reasons. I need to be able to reference all Girl Scout correspondence until the next membership year. I need to be able to refer to my Girl Scout training records forever. I need to hang onto tax receipts for 7 years. But what about the other? That’s where I set my retention rules. If I didn’t have them, “out of sight, out of mind” would definitely apply, and my mailbox would be unwieldly.
