Personal Archiving: E-mail

If you want to maintain access to your e-mail for the long term, take some time to think through what you really want to keep and let go of the rest.

Then make a plan for keeping those kinds of e-mails you really need.

These links can help you make a plan! 

Tips for working through your specific e-mail situation 

A great 2-page PDF guide defining e-mail lingo and providing step-by-step tips

Keeping Personal Electronic Mail (excerpted from the Library of Congress, 1.8.2017)

Identify all your e-mail sources

• Identify your personal e-mail accounts.
• Within each account, find all folders or other separate groupings of messages; include any "archived" messages.

Decide which messages have long-term value

• Pick the messages you feel are especially important.
• You can pick a few messages or many.
• Save attachments that are part of the selected messages .

Export the selected messages

• If saving a few messages, you can use the "save as" command in your e-mail browser or software program to export them as individual files.
• If saving many e-mails, investigate automatically exporting them using the email program.
• If possible, save messages in an open format.
• Save metadata for the messages, including the message "header" (the subject, from, to and time and date).

Organize the saved messages

• Give individual messages and attachments descriptive file names.
• Create a directory/folder structure on your computer to put the saved messages and attachments.
• Write a brief summary of the directory structure and its files.

Make copies and manage them in different places

• Make at least two copies of your selected messages and attachments—more copies are better.
• One copy can stay on your computer or laptop; put other copies on separate media such as DVDs, CDs, portable hard drives, thumb drives or Internet storage.
• Store copies in different locations that are as physically far apart as practical. If disaster strikes one location, copies of your e-mails and attachments in the other place should be safe.
• Put a copy of the summary description with your important papers in a secure location.
• Check your saved e-mail and attachments at least once a year to make sure you can read them.
• Create new media copies every five years or when necessary to avoid data loss.