Are you a piler, filer, or purger?

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

More...

 

[Arc]

Oh ! I didn't know earlier that I am a piler . Learning about myself never ends

 

[Crispy]

That's a hard one I'm a Piler/Purger.

 

[Corrine]

I purge the majority, file a bunch and pile a few, probably along the lines of 90% purge, 8% file and 2% pile.

 

[Joan Archer]

I do all 3, I pile some delete a load and file the rest, I have a number of folders each named where the mail goes to via message rules depending on the email in question.

 

[Dave76]

Purge some file most of the rest, guilty on 3 counts.

 

[bobtran]

Filer/purger....who would have guessed. Can't stand to have my Inbox full of email. Married to a piler and it caused me to
build her a laptop with her own email address.

 

[starwolf1336]

Yup, i'm a purger.

 

[tw33k]

I purge all non-essential mail and file the rest. I never pile (can't stand it!)
I'm quite anal at times

 

[notsograymatter]

Oh I don't delete anything, it's all stored online so what's the point, I'm not paying for the disk space

Granted, I move anything I don't need at a later date to "Old Mail" but it doesn't actually get deleted. It's actually saved me on a few occasions!

Oh btw, if you're a gmail piler and want to purge your e-mail w/out sorting through it do this:

Select All > Select All #### Conversations In... (Mid-Top of messages) > Delete or Move

 

[MWRed]

I delete everything to a point. If it's somewhat important, i'll move it somewhere, but I absolutely hate having anything left in my inbox or deleted items folder.

 

[echrada]

All three, depending on the email it can get filed, purged or deleted (sometimes without reading).

 

[theog]

a Bit of each.

 

[tw33k]

I delete everything to a point. If it's somewhat important, i'll move it somewhere, but I absolutely hate having anything left in my inbox or deleted items folder.

I'm like you. I hate having mail just sitting in the inbox. If it's worth keeping I file it, if not I purge it. And I always empty the deleted folder. I do keep most sent mail tho. And I use Xobni which finds anything and everything.