<p>I don't PM a lot, but I really enjoy the feature. Sometimes I'll reach out to someone I think I might know or would like to get to know; a few times students or other parents have reached out to me about an area where I have shown particular knowledge or understanding. I also get the occasional request for essay reading help.</p>
<p>As many of you know doubt know, your PM folder can reach its 50 message limit surprisingly quickly. When I approach the limt, I'll go through and delete a few to make more space, but I find it hard to do; nearly every one has some special meaning to me, and the longer I'm on CC, the harder it is to delete some of the older ones. If I've had a multi-message exchange with someone, I'll often delete all but one, just to keep the memory and the connection alive in my mind.</p>
<p>I realize that this is silly. There are "CC friends" that have evolved into real life friends, and when we exchange messages we do it by email rather than PM. Which leads me to another question: Do you often give out your email addresses and communicate that way rather than letting your PM box fill too quickly? I'm hesitant to do this because my email address contains my real life name, so any pretense of anonymity is immediately gone.</p>
<p>Sorry for going on and on. How do people here manage their PMs?</p>
<p>sherpa,
I tend to sort through my PM’s when it gets close to the limit, but I do tend to save one or maybe two messages from particular people, especially if they’ve signed with their “real” first name. I can use these messages as a reference point in case I forget a name! I haven’t exchanged email addresses with anyone in a long time, but I have exchanged phone numbers. ;)</p>
<p>I don’t get a lot of PM’s but I usually save them for a few days in case the poster PM’s again and I need to reread the previous one.<br>
I have exchanged email and phone numbers with one person who is no longer on CC.
It’s been over two years and we still contact each other regularly. Just got an email from her tonight. We’ve never met IRL but we are great friends.</p>
<p>Usually, you will get an email notifying you of the PM in your inbox. I try not to discard the email, so if I need to reference it I can find it in my email instead of CC.</p>
<p>I always love to get PMs, and enjoy those personal exchanges. Here’s my dilemma: do you save the ones you sent? I like regular emails much better: not only is it unlimited, but it also automatically saves everything i sent. </p>
<p>How do you program your sent messages? Did you do that?</p>
<p>sherpa, you can sign up for a gmail or similar type account for people you don’t want to give your main email to. You can have that address forward to your main email, so you don’t have to check multiple accounts.</p>
<p>I just download them into a text file and save them in a directory on my HD. It’s a little clunky but I don’t like to delete them, either. There’s an option on the PM page to download them into a file - it’s easy.</p>
<p>mathmom, if you go to the bottom of the page where the messages are listed, it says “Download all messages as” and you can select which format. It downloads the ‘to’ and ‘from’ into one file, at least if you do it in txt.</p>
<p>^Thanks for the tip. It always seemed like there might be a smarter way to do it, but I was too lazy. The few times I’ve actually wanted to look at something again, it was always something that got sent to me.</p>
<p>I am very lucky that I have no such problem on CC :). At work, my email storage is twice as big as allowed by the company policy. I think everyone on CC who get a lot of PMs should ask CC to give them more capacity.</p>
<p>Just a thought, this could be a good income source for CC, sell more PM storage to power users on CC.</p>
I haven’t exchanged email addresses with anyone in a long time, but I have exchanged phone numbers. ;)</p>