How do I free up email storage?
Finding the large attachments filling your mailbox, clearing them safely, and stopping the account filling again.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 40 min
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Sort by size rather than date and delete the largest messages first — a handful of big attachments usually accounts for most of the space. Then empty Trash and Spam, which still count towards your quota until you do.
Mailbox quotas fill through attachments, not through message count. Ten thousand text emails take less space than fifty photo attachments. Sorting by size finds the space in minutes, where deleting by date takes hours and frees very little.
What you'll need
- Access to your email account
- Somewhere to save attachments you need (optional)
Step by step
- Find out what is actually using the space.Google account storage is shared between Gmail, Drive and Photos, so the mail may not be the problem at all. Check the storage breakdown first.
- Search for large messages.In Gmail, search 'has:attachment larger:10M'. Most clients let you sort by size. This is where the space is.
- Save anything you need before deleting.Download attachments worth keeping into a properly organised folder, where you can actually find them again.
- Delete the large ones and empty the Trash.Deleted mail sits in Trash for thirty days and still counts against your quota. Emptying it is what actually frees the space.
- Empty Spam as well.It counts too, and it is often surprisingly large. Most clients have a one-click empty.
- Deal with the Sent folder.Frequently the largest folder, because everything you have ever sent with an attachment is in it. It is easily overlooked.
- Unsubscribe from what fills it up again.Bulk newsletters with images add up. Ten minutes unsubscribing prevents the problem returning.
- Set up filters to auto-delete routine mail.Notifications, receipts and alerts you never re-read can be auto-deleted after thirty days.
Tips
- Storage in shared accounts is used by cloud files and photo backups too. Deleting email may be the wrong place to look entirely.
- When a mailbox is full, incoming mail bounces. That is a real cost of ignoring it, not just an inconvenience.
- Archiving is not deleting. Archived mail still occupies quota; it is only hidden from the inbox.
Common mistakes
- Deleting oldest first — Old text emails are tiny. A single recent photo attachment can be worth thousands of them.
- Not emptying the Trash — Deleted mail counts against the quota for thirty days, so nothing appears to have been freed.
- Deleting attachments without saving them — Email is where many people's only copy of a document lives. Save first, then delete.
Questions people ask
Why is my email storage full when I deleted everything?
Deleted mail sits in Trash for thirty days and still counts, and Spam counts too. Empty both. On a Google account, Drive and Photos share the same quota.
How do I find large emails?
Search 'has:attachment larger:10M' in Gmail, or sort by size in most other clients. A handful of large attachments usually accounts for the bulk of the space.