Proven Methods to Clean Up Space in Gmail: Easy Cleanup Tips

Summary: An IT professional’s Gmail mailbox is cluttered with years of irrelevant emails and attachments. Since they are no longer needed, they chose to clean up space in Gmail to stay organized and efficient. This technical blog will provide effective ways to clean and free up the storage space in Gmail. We will include both free and automated ways using a tool, MCD Gmail Backup Tool. With this tool, user can back up their Gmail data and efficiently free up space for new emails. 

Why Gmail Storage Cleanup is Required?

• To reclaim storage space: Delete unnecessary emails and attachments to make room for new data.
• Uninterrupted email communication: Hitting the storage quota might lead to not sending or receiving new emails.
• For Improved Email Searchability: Cleaning out old email data will improve the search speed.
• Improved Storage Management: By deleting large email files, Gmail can better share the storage space across Drive and the Photos app. 
• Faster Backup: A clean and organized Gmail will speed up the backup or migration process.

How to Clean Up Gmail Storage?

Approach 01: Delete Emails With Large Attachments

Large emails and attachments consume a major space in Gmail storage. With Gmail’s built-in search filters, users can manually search and delete them. 

How to free up space in Gmail: follow these steps:

1. Open Gmail and sign in to your Gmail account.
2. Then, in the search bar, type “has:attachment larger: 10MB”.
3. After that, Gmail will filter out the specified emails according to size.
4. Review and select the emails to be deleted, and then hit the Trash button.
5. Also, to permanently delete the emails, click on Empty Trash now.

Approach 02: Empty the Spam & Trash Folders

The user deletes the emails from the Gmail inbox, but these emails stay under the Spam and Trash folders. These emails are either deleted manually or they are automatically deleted after 30 days. 

These are the steps to start the process:

1. Sign in to the Gmail application with your account credentials.
2. Then, in the left panel, click on More > Spam and press “Delete all spam messages now”.
3. After that, click Ok to proceed.
4. Now, open the Trash folder and click on Empty Trash now.

Approach 03: Remove Promotional and Social Emails 

How to clean storage in Gmail? Both promotional and social emails occupy a large amount of space in Gmail. In the Gmail email client, these emails are grouped under the Promotional and Social categories. 

Follow the instructions to begin the cleanup process:

1. In your web browser, log in to your Gmail account.
2. After that, click on the Promotions tab and check the checkbox to select all the emails.
3. A pop-up message will be displayed saying, “Select all conversations in Promotions”.
4. Then, tap the Trash icon. You can also empty the Trash folder.
5. Similarly, click on the Social tab and repeat the same process.

Approach 04: Delete Oversized Files in Google Drive and Photos App

The Gmail storage is shared with the Google Drive and Photos applications. Users should regularly check and manually remove old and duplicate files in Google Drive and the Photos app to optimize storage space. 

These are the steps to be followed to clean up Gmail’s storage:

1. Open the Google Drive application.
2. Sign in to your Google account and click on Storage.
3. Then, check the files and choose the ones that you want to delete.
4. After that, right-click on the selected items and choose Remove > Trash > Empty Trash.

Clean Up Space in Gmail Using a Specialized Tool 

The specialized Gmail Backup Tool is a powerful tool that backs up Gmail data while preserving the original data. It supports multiple export formats and migrates emails to different platforms . Throughout the conversion, it preserves the metadata and original folder structure. With this tool users can effortlessly transfer emails from Gmail to Outlook and other email client. In addition to this, the tool’s advanced capabilities, like duplicate detection and attachment exclusion, make it a comprehensive one. 

Quick steps for Gmail storage cleanup:

1. To begin, open the tool on your Computer.
2. Choose Gmail (Backup Mails Only).
3. Now, type in the Gmail account Email ID and Password. Then, click Sign In.
4. After that, pick the folders that you want to back up and click Next.
5. Then, choose the desired File Format in which you want to back up the Gmail files.
6. Next, apply the additional filters and press the Download button.

Conclusion

For better storage management and organization of emails, users tend to clean up space in Gmail. In this article, we have covered five approaches to free up the storage space in Gmail. Four of them are manual, and one is an automated approach using the Gmail Backup Tool. The tool efficiently backs up the email data quickly with accuracy.

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