Should you delete all emails you get while you are on holiday?

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).

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 :)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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