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When we looked into how people used email, we found some interesting patterns. It turns out that there are generally three types of people when it comes to email: pilers, filers, and purgers.
Which are you?
- Piler: “I generally don’t put email into a folder or archive. I don’t delete it. I just let it pile up in my inbox."
- Filer: “I generally categorize messages by moving them into folders I’ve created or assigning labels to each message.”
- Purger:  “I generally delete email after I’ve read it.”
Different strokes for different folks. It’s a fun engineering challenge to build an email service that works well for all three types of folks.
Here’s a bit of data on how pilers, filers, and purgers tend to manage the email in their accounts.
Source: Microsoft internal
And a chart that will give you a sense as to what percentage of people are like you.
Coming up next – did you know that Hotmail has keyboard shortcuts? Did you know that you can choose between Outlook shortcuts and Gmail-compatible shortcuts? Pretty geeky, huh? I’ll talk next about how we think about those features that we geeks love and that most people never use.
Dick Craddock
Group Program Manager, Windows Live Hotmail
All three. I was a filer (~8600 archived), but since I unintentionally downloaded my Gmail account to the inbox, I've never gotten around to filing or deleting them (~2900). Like most people I will delete many emails either upon read, or sometimes even before.
I suppose I could be classed as all 3, incoming emails automatically go into folders depending on what they are, I do keep certain ones, again they are filed in their own folders, but the majority get deleted when I've read them.
Oh I am most definetly a piler. HA HA. I have probably got email from as far back as 2004. LOL.
Purger, Except for receipts and software registrations, those I file.
At home? Or at work? Because I'd have to give two different answers...
At home, I File what I need (receipts and product keys, mostly), and periodically erase my inbox. So: Purger
At Work, each message gets a simple Pass/Fail test as to whether it's relevant. No? Gone immediately. Everything else gets filed according to subject, sender, project, etc... Actionable or not. So: Filer
I guess I am a Filler. I save most every email and move then to a folder in outlook depending on which emaill account it was sent to
Filer, without question. I have pretty much unlimited space on my account; space that I've barely touched. I file EVERYTHING.
I’m definitely a Filer. I’ve got e-mails going all the way back to 2000. I also tend to keep my old .pst’s. Never know when you might need something :)
Definitely a filer,
I use Pop to get my emails from the provider, but leave all messages on the server
I have a load of rules set-up in outlook that classify and file all mails, locally - I will delete some straight from the inbox or the file folder but the in the on-line storage all items are archived from the inbox every day or so
My outlook in-box is always kept as empty as possible so any messages that do not meet a rule criteria are easily found and actioned, If the mail is from a source that may be sending regularly then I add a rule and folder to file and classify.
The only messages that are ever actually deleted beyond recovery are spam
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