May monthly poll

[Computer Hope Admin]

For the month of May we thought it would be interesting to know what the date of the oldest e-mail you've saved in your inbox? Feel free to tell us about the e-mail, why you're keeping it, etc.

All past monthly polls and results can also be found on the Computer Hope poll page.

[Aegis]

I'm a lightweight in this department.  Between switching ISP's and losing a bunch of stuff that was on my backup device  I can only go back to '05.

[Sidewinder]

Feel free to tell us about the e-mail, why you're keeping it, etc.

I found an email from DJST dated 9 Jun 2000. It contains the key for my Texturizer editor which I bought back in the day for $20 USD.

I kept it because I knew someday, someone, would have a poll about this and I wanted to have a ready answer. 

[quaxo]

2002 for my Hotmail inbox. I have some older ones (back to 1999) archived in Outlook, but since they're technically not in my inbox, I guess they don't count.

[Calum]

2006 for my Gmail, I tend to clean out most stuff though.

[evilfantasy]

Feel free to tell us about the e-mail, why you're keeping it, etc.

2006 in my Yahoo mail. The subject is "a picture for you"

[Computer Hope Admin]

My oldest is January of '05. Looks like we're all pack rats when it comes to e-mail.

[quaxo]

I'm using less than 10% of Hotmail's limit and have all my mail since 2002 when I opened that account. My Outlook (Gmail) account gets cleaned and archived regularly, oldest thing in there is Feb '08.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Wow that's pretty crazy you've got all your mail saved quaxo. So what is the first e-mail you've got in 2002?

[KenJackson]

I currently have 575 items in my inbox.  There are a lot of things I want to keep.  But there are many more that I just wanted to keep for a little while, but haven't gotten around to reevaluating and purging.  Keeping up with it is a full-time job.

[quaxo]

Wow that's pretty crazy you've got all your mail saved quaxo. So what is the first e-mail you've got in 2002?

The one in the screen shot, January 18, 2002.

[soybean]

I have many folders in Outlook Express, to organize my email.  So, if I include folders other than Inbox, I believe the oldest email I have is dated 3/18/1999.  It's a message from my son who was living in another state at the time.  It's in a folder setup just for mail from him.  I tend to keep some email for a long time, which I why I setup folders so that it doesn't all accumulate in my Inbox.

[Astoria]

My oldest one is from 2006, that's when I set up Thunderbird for my gmail account.

Actually I cheated, cause I have no mail in my inbox, all the mail I recieve is directly moved into folders, or deleted.
And than if it's a folder not for family or friends, I have set a retention policy for them (like newsletters and such). And about once a month, I log in on the web, and clean that out.

[sdog_2000]

I have kept my e-mail so long becaise I have Yahoo Mail with unlimited storage, and find no need to delete emails

[saf-beagle]

1998. I sent my Dad an E-mail from Formentera, a small desert island off the coast of Spain and sent myself a copy. I told him about the nude beaches and a beautiful blonde woman from Holland ( She resembled Meg Ryan [ before her botox reconstruction]) who had a very interesting array of piercings that looked like a golden zipper. Use your imagination..

and how I observed a very ingenious fellow who had a water proof camera, a snorkel, goggles and photographed the naked women swimmers, at a depth of about 10 feet. God, I searched everywhere for a waterproof camera but they were sold out.