I recently got a warning that my PM limit was nearing. I deleted a few and then decided to DL the rest instead of permanently losing them.
What's your way of dealing with this?

[Sabrina]

Gosh, isn't that 9500 messages or something like that? I keep mine clean. No messages at all.

lol, wow, 6500 messages, you're popular :P

[lizardlady]

um.... never been a problem for me. I don't think I have 65 PMs in my folder much less 6500!.

[Fresia]

I used to keep them all as my memory was not so good. I discovered I only have been going back to certain specific ones. So now I either delete after I respond to them or once a week the ones that I have responded too; also even more so I will delete the messages that I know I have sent back and gotten a response from. It helps keep the box at a minimum level. Even ones that are particular messages that I still want to keep, the box still stays way down below the limit doing this.

Good luck sorting through your box because not knowing what happens here when the box is full, in my other email accounts, I hate to miss messages because the box is full and they get rejected for the sender. Best wishes.

Originally Posted by Tirekyll

lol, wow, 6500 messages, you're popular :P

I'm not so sure I'd put it that way

[Perna]

Making your correspondents feel "special" George, 1 of 6500 you wanted to save? I only keep the ones I want because they have information I am working with and usually only for a certain period of time, until the situation is not interesting anymore.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by George H.

I recently got a warning that my PM limit was nearing. I deleted a few and then decided to DL the rest instead of permanently losing them.
What's your way of dealing with this?

Most of my pms I keep for 30 days and then delete them. but occasionally I keep a few longer than that (about 60 days) so I can refer back to them if I recognize the same person has pmed me about the same topic, or when its a note from the mods with helpful tips. anything beyond that is extremely rare.

[FooZe]

At the bottom of the Inbox page there are options to download all your PMs in one of several formats:

I've tried only the "Text" format so far, but it's worked well enough for me that I haven't even looked at the others. I use Windows XP so the downloaded file opens in Windows Notepad. I get to save it to wherever I want, which for me is a folder called Psych Central > PM Saves. I work the date of the save (yymmdd) into the filename when I save it, so I can distinguish older saves from newer ones. Once I'm sure I've saved my PMs (and backed up the files to CD or something), I can delete any of the originals that I don't expect to need.

When I want to search for a particular PM, I open the file of saved PMs in Notepad and use the "Find" (Ctrl-F) function to search for a username or a distinctive word in the PM.

I've dl'ed them as txt and as csv files. The csv file opens with Excel. Both have their advantages but I'd recommend the csv. Mine were automatically saved with the save date in the file name.
As far as reasons for saving... some were for sentimental value and some just because it seemed wise to save them. They are history. The txt file was the largest and it was only 11MB so they don't take up much space on the HD.