Set how long email bodies are kept

Decide what history you need

Owners and admins with company-edit access can set the company’s email-body retention in Settings → Privacy. This controls stored message text, not provider mail or every record created from an email. Check your recordkeeping needs before shortening it.

Set email-body retention

1. Open Settings → Privacy → Mail retention.
2. Enter Keep mail bodies for (days) within the range shown, or leave it blank for no time-based body-removal limit.
3. Choose Save and check Currently.
4. For an older message with missing text, compare its age with this setting and check the original mailbox if you need the source message.

What scheduled cleanup removes

The cleanup removes full email bodies older than the configured period and old completed outgoing-mail recovery copies. Subjects, senders, attachments and extracted tasks remain. Removing bodies reduces the original text available to Sidekick and mail analysis. Increasing the period later does not restore bodies already removed.

Disconnection and deletion are different

Disconnecting a mailbox stops that connection but does not erase previously imported messages. Retention is not a full deletion of all email-derived records. For company export or deletion, use the corresponding Privacy or Members controls and review their scope.