May monthly poll

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

[Malware Removal Specialist]

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"

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 *censored* 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.