How to resolve “Gmail is out of space” issue?

Read time: 11 minutes

‘Google says I am out of storage, but I recently deleted a ton of emails and other junk data from my mailbox. Apart from buying the additional storage, what else can I do?’

Gmail Out of Storage warning is displayed when the saved data crosses the recommended storage limit. Even though, Google provides 15 GB of storage to all its users; it is a shared storage. It means, this 15GB of storage saves the entire data related to that Google account, including Gmail, Photos, Slides, Docs, Sheets, and Drive.

Although for users who are actively using Google’s services, even 15GB might feel less of a space with frequent backups and large attachments. When this limit exceeds, you’ll get an error message saying, “Gmail Quota Exceeded,” and then you won’t be able to send or receive emails. So, it’s important to manage your Gmail storage. Here, we will be discussing some ways that can help you to manage Gmail storage.

Why is Gmail Out of Storage all the time?

Maybe you’ve forgotten about some old emails, or there are old photos piling up. Gmail storage full error can be caused because of these common reasons:

• Shared storage: The 15GB storage is used to store all data of the Google ecosystem. This includes backup of chats, files, photos, and mailbox data.
• Hidden files and folders: A full trash folder of Gmail, Google Drive, or Google Photos can quickly eat away the 15GB folder even if your primary folders are empty (or have limited data).
• Emails with large attachments: Old emails having large-sized attachments can also fill up storage pretty quick, until they’re deleted permanently.
• Frequent app backups: Regular backup of mobile applications data (like WhatsApp) can also count against your storage limit.

How to Check What is Filling up Google Storage?

To manage your Gmail account storage, it’s necessary to first understand how the storage space distribution looks like currently. To analyze the Gmail storage, follow these steps:

• Go to the Drive storage page and select “View details.” You’ll be able to see the total storage and the used storage of your Gmail Account like this:Now, you know which service is using the larger part of the storage. So, you can easily free space from that service.

How to fix “Gmail is out of storage” issue?

On June 1, 2021, Google changed its storage policy stating that all the data of a Google account will be counted within the 15 GB storage limit. This includes Gmail as well and thus it gives rise to the Gmail out of storage error.

Solution 1: Delete unnecessary mails, files, and attachments

The easiest method to free the space from a Gmail account is to delete unnecessary emails, photos, and attachments. If you use Gmail in the mobile app, then there are chances that Google Photos has auto-synced all your images and videos. So, remove the unnecessary images and videos from Google photos to free the space.

Note: Make sure you create a backup of your photos before removing them.

• Open Google drive on your computer to view the listed files and remove unwanted files one by one.
• Also, in your Gmail, delete the largest or oldest email files.
• To search for large and old files, type “Larger:5m,” “Older_than:1y” in the search box, and then remove those files.
• Once you’re done removing all the unnecessary files, go to the “Trash” folder and delete all the files permanently to fix this error “Gmail Quota Exceeded”

Move Gmail Emails to Another Gmail account

If all your Gmail messages are important and you don’t want to lose any of them, then you can migrate them to another account for free. This will be your secondary account in which you can distribute the data accordingly. To migrate emails from One Gmail to another Gmail account, follow these steps.

• Create a new Gmail account.
• Now, go to the settings of the old Gmail account from which you want to migrate emails.
• Now, click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” from the upper menu and enable POP for all mail, and choose “delete Gmail’s copy” from the drop-down menu like this;
• Now, open the new Gmail account and go to settings. Select “Accounts and Import” from the upper menu. Click “Import mail and contacts” in the menu.
• A pop-up window will appear on your screen. Enter the email from which you want to import the email files and click Continue.
• After this, another window will open to ask for your permission. Click “Allow” and then choose the import options and click the “Start Import” button.
• Now, wait for Google to transfer all emails to your new account. Once the migration is done, you’ll be able to see all your email in the new account like this:One major issue with this method is that it can take days or sometimes even one week to transfer all emails to your new Gmail account.

Solution 3: Delete old emails

If you have a lot of old emails taking up space in your Gmail account, deleting them can free up some much-needed storage space. To delete old emails, log in to your Gmail account and click on the search bar at the top of the page. Then, enter “before: YYYY/MM/DD” (without the quotation marks) and press Enter. This will show you all emails that were sent before the date you specify. From here, you can delete all the emails which you don’t need anymore. In case an important email gets deleted, you can recover it within 30 days from the Trash folder.

Solution 4: Archive Gmail Emails with Google takeout

To clear some space from the Gmail storage, users can take help from the inbuilt Google Takeout feature. It is a data retrieval platform that imports all the data and stores it in a single file. This file can later be used by the user at their own convenience. The necessary steps for this process are given below-

1. Go to this link Google Takeout and open it with your Gmail account sign-in credentials.
2. Now click on the Deselect all option to deselect the default selected options for backup.
3. Select the Mail checkbox and then click on the Next step.
4. Choose the backup frequency in the next step.
5. Continue with selecting the desired file type and size of the emails for backup. After this click on Create export.
6. The export process will be initiated. You need to wait for the completion as it will take time depending on the size of the emails in the Gmail account.
7. Once the export is completed, the data is ready to download to the system drive location. Click on the Download link to download the data and save it to the desired system drive location from the Downloads folder.This manual method is effective for taking Gmail backup manually, but the only limitation is non-flexibility in specific data backup, i.e. the absence of filter options.

Backup Gmail emails without deleting them

Deleting old data can free up storage, but it may not be for the best if the old data consists of important emails, and business records that you may need later on. If you want to keep your emails but still want to free up space in your Google account. Backing up your important data locally helps you free up space without deleting any of it.

Google Takeout is a great option to create a local archive of your data, but it offers little control if you need to backup only a few folders. For such a requirement, you need a dedicated Gmail Backup utility that saves all the required data locally on your system. Kernel Gmail Backup saves copies of Gmail data to user’s chosen location without losing any data.

Final words

If you are experiencing the “Gmail is out of space” error message, there are a few things that you can do to try and resolve the issue. First, make sure that you have deleted all the irrelevant emails, photos, and files from your account. You can also try to backup your data locally to free up space without losing your data. This will give you some extra storage space in case you need it.

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