Help! I’m Out of Space in Gmail?!?
If you’ve seen this pop-up at the top of your gmail, you know it can get annoying and more prevalent as time goes on. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to understand what’s going on, and we have some great tips to share about how to fix it.
Much like every other online service nowadays, Google/Gmail has a unified box of space they give everyone, which is generally 15GB of space. This amount of space comes free with each google account created, and is shared between their multiple apps and programs (like Google Photos, Google Docs, and Gmail). For $1.99/month (or $19.99/year), you can upgrade your Google space to 100GB, so if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want the hassle of regular cleanup or maintenance, that’s the simple solution to the problem. For everyone else, keep reading.
When you get the notification that your Google account is out of space, you need to identify the culprit. The easiest way is to go to your Gmail inbox, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. At the lower left hand side of the screen, it will tell you how much space you’re using (and list it in red if you’re close to exceeding that space). Click on the ‘manage’ button below it, If you click on manage, it will show you where how much data you have stored between the different Google apps.
The easiest place to start cleanup is in Gmail. In the search box in on the gmail website, type “size:25000000” in the search box. This will search for all emails that are over 25mb in size. Start at the bottom of this list (or through previous pages to find the oldest ones), and delete any of these emails that you feel are no longer important to keep. Probably many are old junk videos and attachments you don’t even need anyway. If you feel you need to be a little more specific, you can further specify your search by saying “in:sent size:25000000”. This will identify any files that you have sent that are over 25mb in size. Again, scroll to the bottom of this list and delete the emails that you probably don’t need anymore. When you’re done, don’t forget to delete your Trash (and Spam) folders to clear out that space you just freed.
After you have done this, it should free up a significant amount of space (might need to refresh your inbox or give it a minute or two to update the change). If it doesn’t, look at what is in your Google Drive (maybe old presentations or files you no longer need are still associated with your account), or look at your Google Photos (have you set your phone to auto-backup, or joined someone else’s photo album which makes that count against your storage space?)
If I lost you back at the top of this email, don’t hesitate to reach out for more help. We don’t need anyone maxing out their space or paying a yearly reoccurring fee just because they don’t know how to manage their space. Visit us at www.canyonero.org for more information.