when our inbox When one gets overwhelmed with unnecessary emails, we have two options. One is to delete the mails and the other is to archive them. But before doing this you should know which feature does what. Nowadays, our social media apps like WhatsApp and a few others, give us an option to archive conversations so that they don’t show up on our inbox/app window.
Let’s discuss how it works
If we delete or archive an email from inbox, it disappears from inbox. This means it will no longer be visible in your gmail inbox folder. The Archive feature basically deletes emails from your sight but they don’t go to the Trash folder.
When a user clicks on the archive button, the mails are moved to the “Archived” folder. In some email services like Gmail, an archived email does not go to any folder. It is visible only when a user switches to ‘All Mail’ (both on web and mobile). However, archived mail shows up in search results.
If you think of a physical mail, archiving is like putting it in a place where you can’t see it everyday. You can watch and read whenever you want.
what happens when you delete a mail
However, deleting an email is different. When you delete an unnecessary mail, it goes to the Trash folder, where it stays for 30 days, before being permanently deleted from your account. But if you want to delete the mail completely in one go, you can go to the Trash folder after deleting and choose to permanently delete the mail there.
The main difference here is that in the case of archived mail, they are never automatically emptied until the user deletes them. Also, once mails are deleted, they are no longer visible when you switch to “All Mail”.
what about storage
Archived emails are counted in your email. So, if you want to save storage, archiving is not the solution. Even emails in the Trash box count in your storage until they are deleted. Go to your Trash and select Empty Trash, this will free up space.