Clean up your Gmail inbox to free up storage space.
The fateful moment that you dreaded so much for several weeks has finally arrived … You will soon no longer have enough space on your Google storage to receive your dozens of daily emails. With only 15 GB of free space to share between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, cleaning your inbox quickly becomes essential. Here are six tips to help you sort it out.
1. Empty your Google Drive
To make room on Gmail, start by cleaning up your Google Drive. You can check the distribution of the storage occupation by going to the bottom left of your mailbox, then clicking on Manage.
A page dedicated to Google Drive storage should then appear. Click on Show details to obtain the distribution of the occupation of your storage.
If you have run out of room to receive your emails, deleting junk files stored on your Google Drive should quickly free up space.
2. Delete messages by category
Over time, you probably receive more and more emails from your accounts on social networks, advertisements or simply notifications of shipments or order validation for your online purchases. A good way to save space on your inbox is to start by erasing all those unnecessary messages.
To simplify the process, you can configure the display of your Gmail mailbox to display the messages received by category, in dedicated tabs. To do this, in the main window of your inbox, click the cogwheel icon, then click Configure Inbox.
In the pop-up that appears, check all the categories offered then validate by clicking on Save.
Back on your inbox, your messages have been sorted by categories, in tabs. Click on one of them, for example, Promotions, and then proceed to delete any messages that you do not want to keep.
In case you want to delete everything, click on the checkbox displayed to the left of the toolbar to select all the emails on the page or, even more drastically, click on Select the x conversations in TabName to select all the emails on the page. category posts, and then click the trash can icon.
3. Empty the recycle bin
It might sound logical, but if you delete emails without emptying the Recycle Bin, there is no risk of reclaiming space. As with your operating system, Google has implemented a recycle bin system to allow you to easily recover accidentally deleted messages.
Click the More menu displayed in the left column to expand the other inbox locations, then click Recycle Bin. You can review deleted emails one last time if you want. Then click on Empty trash at the top of the window to permanently get rid of deleted messages.
4. Look for the largest messages
To continue your cleaning a little more, why not search for the largest messages to delete them? Gmail includes an advanced search function that allows you to search for all messages containing specific terms, with or without attachments, or even having a certain weight. Once you have mastered this function, you can easily delete the largest emails to free up space.
To use it, expand the advanced search options by clicking on the arrow displayed at the end of the search field.
5. Delete sent emails
If cleaning your inbox can save you several GB, don’t forget to take a look at your outbox. You have certainly already sent large messages, including for example photos of the youngest, vacation videos, etc.
Click on Sent messages in the left column, then optionally use the search engine to filter the largest messages, with or without attachments, as seen in the previous step. Note that the search engine automatically displays a search suffix, in: sent, the purpose of which is to focus the search only in the Sent Messages box.
6. Delete Spam
Depending on how polluted your email address is, your spam folder may be more or less full. Although the messages there are automatically deleted after thirty days, it is perfectly fine to manually empty the Spam folder.
In the left column, click More to expand the additional options. Then click on Spam, then, after checking that all messages are considered spam, click on Delete all spam messages at the top of the window.
