In case your Gmail inbox is nearly full — or worse, already full and you may’t obtain new messages — what do you do? You would possibly begin sorting by 1000’s of unread messages, however the thought of cleansing out your Gmail inbox in all probability fills you with a little bit dread. Nevertheless, earlier than you begin paying for further storage, learn on: We’ll present you easy methods to get 15GB of free storage whereas retaining all of your outdated e-mail.
All you have to do is create a second Gmail account to retailer all of your present messages. There is not any restrict to the variety of free Google accounts you may have, which implies you may set one up as a devoted archive account after which switch all of your outdated emails to it.
Transferring your messages to Gmail can also be a terrific technique in case you have a college or enterprise Gmail account that you simply will not be capable to entry without end. Most universities and companies will deactivate your account when you’re not a scholar or worker, so if you wish to see your outdated messages and recordsdata, you will have to switch them to a private account earlier than you lose them the entry.
Finishing all the strategy of transferring your Gmail messages to a brand new account doesn’t require additionally lengthy, however it can simply rely upon what number of messages you may have. We’ll stroll you thru the easy strategy of transferring your emails out of your outdated account to your new one (together with the essential step of backing the whole lot up first).
For extra about Gmail, study its new AI summaries or easy methods to use emoji reactions.
How a lot knowledge are you able to retailer in Gmail?
Fifteen gigabytes of free storage would possibly look like lots while you arrange a Gmail account, but it surely fills up shortly. For starters, 15GB is not simply used for e-mail: it additionally contains recordsdata you’ve got saved in Google Drive and Google Images.
For those who usually ship or obtain messages that include giant recordsdata like movies, or if you end up importing lots of photographs and movies to your Google Images, then it will not be lengthy earlier than you see “Account storage is low” full “Discover. This implies you’ll not be capable to ship or obtain e-mail on this account, so you will wish to do one thing about it as quickly as doable.
The quickest answer is to improve to a Google One account. Even should you select the most affordable plan — 100GB for $20 a 12 months — you will find yourself paying cash to retailer outdated emails you might not want.
For those who do not wish to purchase extra space, you may at all times delete your outdated emails. You’ll be able to reclaim a stunning quantity of cupboard space by transferring giant recordsdata to the Recycle Bin. Gmail makes it straightforward so that you can determine and delete recordsdata by dimension. Nevertheless, that choice could appear tedious; you in all probability do not wish to spend hours sifting by correspondence from a decade or extra in the past, deciding which reminiscences to maintain and which to do away with without end.
There’s at all times the choice to obtain giant recordsdata to your desktop earlier than deleting them out of your Google account, however sooner or later, you will in all probability run into the identical drawback together with your native recordsdata and have to handle cupboard space. storage in your system.
This brings us to our “core choice”: Transferring all of your emails to a brand new Gmail account.
Learn how to switch your Gmail messages to a brand new e-mail account
Earlier than beginning the Gmail switch course of, we suggest that you simply again up your emails. You are able to do this by downloading your emails both to your pc or to an exterior laborious drive. If you’d like, you may delete the backup after you end transferring your emails to your new account, but it surely’s at all times a good suggestion to maintain an additional copy in place.
To backup your Gmail messages, go to Google Takeout. Utilizing our take a look at Gmail account that held about 75,000 messages, we bought a obtain from Google Takeout in about 2 hours.
As soon as you’ve got saved a replica of your emails, you are prepared to begin transferring them. Listed here are the steps you have to take:
1. Begin by logging into your unique Gmail account, clicking the gear icon within the high proper, and clicking View all settings.
2. Choose POP/IMAP forwarding tab, after which choose the choice Allow POP for all mail (POP stands for Submit Workplace Protocol).
3. You should have a number of choices under When messages are accessed with POP. To mechanically delete emails out of your unique account after the switch, choose delete the copy of Gmail.
4. Choose Save Adjustments.
Now it is time to create your new account and switch all of your messages there:
If you have not already finished so, create your personal new Gmail account, zero inbox — we’ll name this your archive account.
1. Log in to your new archive account, click on the gear icon on the high and choose View all settings.
2. Choose Accounts and import tab on the high after which choose Add a mail account close to Verify mail from different accounts.
3. Within the window that seems, enter the identify of your unique Gmail account. Choose The opposite.
4. Choose Import e-mail from my different account (POP3)ANDChoose The opposite once more.
5. Enter the password of your unique Gmail account. You might also be requested to create a Google app password (see be aware under).
6. Choose 995 beneath Port.
7. Verify these 3 bins: At all times use a safe connection (SSL) when receiving mail, Label incoming messages, Archive incoming messages (skip inbox)
8. Choose Add account.
You might have to create a Google app password to switch Gmail messages
We examined this Gmail message switch course of twice, and each instances the default password for Gmail accounts did not work. After some analysis, we decided that we would want to create a brief “app password” to sync the accounts.
Google app passwords are 16-digit passwords created for “much less safe” apps or gadgets to entry your Google Account. They work precisely like your Google password.
In case your common Google password would not work for syncing Gmail accounts, go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords to create an app password. Simply create a reputation for the password — we used Bulk Electronic mail Switch — after which hit the Create button. You’ll get a pop-up window together with your new 16-digit passcode.
As soon as you’ve got created your app password, return to step 6 of the directions above and use that new app password as an alternative of your common password.
Essential: Google will show your app password solely as soon as. As soon as you’ve got created it, you may’t ask to see it once more, so be sure you write or in any other case document it after it is created.
Google’s personal Assist Heart mentions that “app passwords will not be really helpful and are pointless usually.” So, after you may have completed transferring your Gmail messages, we suggest you to delete the applying password.
What occurs after my Gmail accounts sync?
As soon as you’ve got efficiently linked your new archive Gmail account to your unique account, your emails ought to begin transferring mechanically. The method could take a number of hours or days, relying on the variety of emails you may have.
In our take a look at account with about 75,000 messages, we discovered that it took Gmail about 2 full days to switch all of them from the unique account to the brand new archived mail account.
Essential: After transferring your Gmail messages to your archived mail account, your unique Gmail account will place all these messages within the Trash folder, which you’ll need to empty manually. Cleansing these 75,000 messages from the Trash took about an hour.
Earlier than transferring Gmail messages, our take a look at account used simply over 12GB, or 80% of Google’s free 15GB. After the switch, the account used solely 0.66 GB, of which 0.06 GB was from Gmail.
Which Gmail messages will not switch?
We discovered that Gmail transferred all of our messages besides for 2 classes – Drafts and Spam.
You’ll have to determine what to do together with your drafts by hand. Junk messages are mechanically deleted each 30 days, so you may let Gmail deal with it, or go into the spam folder your self after you’ve got transferred your mail and delete or ahead these messages.
As soon as all of your emails have been imported into your new account, benefit from the inbox zero expertise. You have got given your unique account a brand new assure.
At this level, there are two last steps: you will wish to cease the automated switch course of so you may proceed utilizing your unique account, and you may wish to delete the app password if you must.
1. Sign up to your new account, go to your account SETTINGS and choose View all settings.
2. Choose Accounts and import tab, after which choose RUB on your unique account (sub Verify mail from different accounts.)
3. When requested to Affirm the deletion of the mail accountChoose OK.
For those who needed to create a Google app password and wish to delete it now, return to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and click on the trash icon subsequent to the password you created.
Congratulations, you are finished.
One last essential be aware: Google will delete accounts which were inactive for greater than two years. So be sure to do not fully ignore all of your outdated emails after transferring them. For those who do not plan to repeatedly use your archive account to ship e-mail, you may preserve the account lively by logging in not less than as soon as each two years.