The days of receiving just a couple of emails per day and easily sorting them out with minimum overwhelm have been over for quite some time. Most people end up with many old emails left, trying to figure out whether to keep or delete them occasionally when the urge to clean up their inbox comes up.
Fortunately, most email providers and clients offer some kind of archiving feature. Archiving your emails instead of deleting them will make your cleanup easier. Unlike deletion, archiving allows you to retrieve your emails in case you need them later.
What is Archiving?
Depending on whether you are using a webmail or email client, the archive is saved either on the server or offline.
Thanks to archiving, your inbox won’t be cluttered with old emails, but at the same time, there is no risk of accidentally irretrievably deleting something that was actually important.
Thanks to archiving, your inbox won’t be cluttered with old emails, but at the same time, there is no risk of accidentally irretrievably deleting something that was actually important.
To learn more about the best policies for keeping your emails, check out our article here.
How to retrieve archived messages in Gmail
So, how to find archived messages? Let’s look at the most widely used webmail - Gmail - first.
Gmail's archiving system works a little differently than you would expect. The email you archive in Gmail by clicking on the Archive button in your Inbox view or when viewing a single email is not moved to a different folder. The only thing that changes is its labels-the Inbox label is removed, and then the message is moved to the All Mail folder.
If you want to retrieve your archived messages in Gmail, you must head to the All Mail folder and search there.
Additionally, utilize the search bar and specify your search by using the “in:all” specifier, followed by your keywords - for example: “in:all team meeting”.
If you want to move the archived messages back to your Inbox while using the Gmail webmail, drag and drop them to the Inbox and the “Inbox” label will be assigned again - then you will be able to find them in your Inbox.
Archiving messages in Outlook
Email clients in general work a little differently than webmails like Gmail. A popular email client like Outlook allows for manual archiving - selecting messages or folders and then moving them to a dedicated archive folder. Archived messages will then be found in the archive folder, which is a local folder.
Outlook also offers AutoArchive, which will move items to an archive folder automatically according to your settings.
The Online Archive feature is available for Microsoft 365 and Exchange accounts. It is essentially a server-based mailbox with additional storage space. Your older emails can be moved there and will be accessible from any device, while they won’t take up space in your primary inbox folder.
Archiving messages in eM Client
eM Client stands out as the best email client for many reasons, with powerful archiving options being one of its great features.
In the eM Client application, you can choose the archiving method that best suits your needs.
Local archiving downloads all your messages from the server to your local drive. You can enable regular automatic archiving based on the emails’ age or opt for one-time archiving done manually from time to time. Head on to Menu > Settings > Mail > Automatic Archiving to automate this process.
The local archive is shown as a separate account under all your other account folders and local folders. It copies the structure of the archived accounts. When archiving locally, you can select which folders to archive - Inbox only, Inbox and its subfolders, or all mail folders. The emails you archive locally will be moved to the local folder and will not be included in your searches unless you check the “Include Archive Folders” option in your search settings. This ensures any irrelevant older emails won’t be mixed in your search results and you can easily limit your search to the current emails only.
Your locally archived emails will not be synchronized with your account and will only be available locally on the device you archived them to, via the eM Client app.
For Gmail accounts, eM Client's local archiving will archive only the real Gmail folders-All Mail, Trash, and Junk. These folders will be replicated in your Gmail account's local archive. Additionally, eM Client will preserve your emails along with their labels (e.g., Inbox, Important, etc.) during the archiving process.
Server-side archiving can be done manually by using the Archive button in the inbox toolbar or by right-clicking the message you want to archive and choosing “Move to Archive”. You can also use the keyboard shortcut “A” after selecting an email - the shortcut can be changed for your convenience in Settings > Shortcuts.
The server-side archiving feature allows you to access your archived messages from any device, as the server-side archive folder synchronizes with all devices that have eM Client installed and the account logged in.
Please note that this applies only in the case of IMAP or EWS protocol.
Same as the locally archived messages, the server-side archived messages will not be included in your searches unless you select the “Include Archive Folders” option.
Server-side Gmail archiving in eM Client functions according to the Gmail webmail - it will simply remove the Inbox label and you will be able to view the message from the All Mail folder under your Gmail account.
By using the eM Client server-side archiving feature, your Inbox will be cleaner and you will be able to view your archived messages from any synced device, in case you need to. This means you won't be restricted to viewing your archived messages solely on the device where you saved them.
Archiving is a clever method for not going insane over an overflowing inbox. When you archive your messages - whether locally or by using server-side archiving - your inbox will stay organized and your old emails will always be accessible for a later reference. With eM Client’s archiving features, no amount of ancient email threads will phase you - you can always move them to the archive, where they belong.