I know you get a lot of email for your small business – we all do.  Whether you keep your email on your server or on your computer it can build up over time.  It is a good idea to clean up your old email from time to time to keep from running out of space and to speed up your email.  You may find you’ll even save yourself some time when you don’t have to search thru all your emails to find things.

Do you have a lot of old messages out there, in your Inbox or perhaps in folders?  Do you really need those messages?  Some companies do need to keep records of customer correspondence but others can get rid of it after a while.  So that is the first step – delete anything you really don’t need.

Do you have old messages that you need to keep but likely won’t access often?  Archive these emails; most email clients allow you to archive emails to a file on your computer.  This physically stores the email in a separate place from the rest of your email.  You can leave that file on your computer (back it up!) or, if you really don’t think you’ll have to access those email often you can copy that file to a CD or to your backup location.

Now that you have cleaned things up a bit, look at what you still have.  Are there ways to organize it using folders to make it easier to use?  This is a great time to group email in folders.  Common ways to do this are by topic, by sender or by date.

Next, clean out your spam or junk folders if you have them (and likely you do).  Finally, take out the trash by emptying your trash or deleted folder.

There, doesn’t your Inbox feel lighter, fresher cleaner?