Freeing Up Space on your Google Account

Here are ways to either reduce Gmail storage use or work around it, listed in order of complexity.

• The easiest way to reduce the used quota for a user is to delete old messages that are using space in the mailbox. See the Your storage limit article for instructions on deleting messages to reduce storage use.

  Using our advanced search operators you may construct custom filters such to identify certain messages, such as those with attachments, using queries like:
  has:attachment

  Or you could identify all messages larger than 1 megabyte using the query:
  size:1000000

  Alternatively, you could use ‘before:' followed by the date in yyyy/mm/dd format to find all messages before a certain date and remove them from the mailbox, like so:
  before:2013/03/25

• If deleting messages isn't feasible, you may archive messages locally in a mail client such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail. This option is explained in more detail in our guide to migrate data away from Google Apps.
• The next workaround involves setting up mail delegation to create a new account for the user but with the ability to switch to view messages in an archive account. To do this:
  1. Rename the primary account username (ex: [email protected]).
  2. Delete the primary alias that automatically gets added to the primary account after renaming.
  3. Create a new account with primary username (ex: [email protected])
  4. Either configure mail delegation or enable multiple sign-in:
     • Use mail delegation to grant access to the old account for the new one. This means you will be generally working in the new account but can switch back into the old one to look at old mail.
     • As an alternative to using mail delegation, you can enable multiple sign-in instead. When configuring multiple sign-in, log into the new account first and then the old one. This will ensure the new account will be the primary account for the user.

     That's it. You're done.