When Gmail, Google’s free email service, went live in 2004, it offered the then unfathomable 1 Gb storage capacity. It didn’t take long for it to fall short. And no matter that over time the capacity of that mailbox has been gradually increased to the current 15 Gb, for many users it will always be insufficient and there will be those who will struggle trying to avoid running out of storage capacity.
Gmail currently offers 15 Gb of storage, since its inception in 2004 with only 1 Gb
In addition those 15 Gb must now be shared with Google Drive and Google PhotosAs the amount of free space for receiving and storing emails is getting more and more complicated, it is useful to know some of the following ways to free up space in Gmail. Previously it may be convenient to make a full copy of the Gmail account, even once completed a “cleaning” in the account can make another backup.
First of all what you need to do is to check the available spaceThis can be easily checked from the desktop version, as it appears at the bottom left of the inbox. There you can see the total available space and what is already occupied.
-Cleanup: From the side tab that indicates the different folders you can perform the storage management, being able to delete emails that remain in the Trash and those that are in the Spam folder, either individually or the block.
-Delete large attachments: From the search box you can invoke the advanced search using the icon with the adjustment bars. Here you can search for large attachments, the ones that take up the most space, indicating a size from which all emails with attachments larger than this size will appear, which will facilitate the deletion that frees more space.
-Delete old emails: From the same search box where the advanced search is invoked using the icon with the adjustment bars you can select a date range in order to discard emails from long ago that you no longer need to continue storing.
-Automatic deletion: The Trash is automatically emptied 30 days after an email has been deleted, but you can manually select the “Empty Trash Now” option if necessary.
-Combined selection: If you can select a date range and a file size, it seems obvious that you can combine both criteria to select old emails containing large attachments to remove emails that we might discard.
-Discard emails from subscriptions, newsletters, bulletins….: Again the advanced search box becomes the great ally. If the search criteria is set as the term “unsubscribe” the result will be all emails that periodically send an email with commercial offers to the mailbox. In addition to being able to delete them all, you can go one by one canceling the respective subscriptions, which will avoid receiving new mailings that later have to be deleted.
-Buy storage space: It would be the last resort when the needs exceed the 15 Gb of free storage provided by Google. The plans progressively increase the capacity and the price to pay monthly, remembering that all that space is shared between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos.