Gmail Full? How To Get 15GB More Data Without Losing Any Messages

If you’ve had your Gmail account for years, there’s a good chance you have thousands of unread messages. When you’re close to using up your 15GB of free storage, you might want to try deleting spam emails or unsubscribing from those newsletters you’ve stopped reading. But if the thought of cleaning out your Gmail inbox fills you with dread, and you don’t want to start paying for extra storage, read on: We’ll show you how to restore your account to zero inbox while keeping all the old ones. email.

All you need to do is create a second Gmail account to store all your current messages. There’s no limit to the number of free Google accounts you can have, which means you can set them up as a dedicated account for archiving, and forwarding all your old emails.

Forwarding your Gmail messages is also a good idea if you have a school or business Gmail account that you won’t be able to access forever. Many universities and businesses will close your account when you are no longer a student or employee, so if you want to view your old messages and files, you will need to transfer them to a personal account before you lose access.

Completing the entire process of transferring your Gmail messages to a new account does not take again long, but it will depend on how many messages you have. We’ll walk you through the easy process of transferring your emails from your old account to your new one (including the important step of backing up everything first).

To find out more about Gmail, read about its new AI shortcuts or how to use emoji reactions.

How much data can you store in Gmail?

Fifteen gigabytes of free storage might sound like a lot when you create a Gmail account, but it fills up quickly. First, 15GB isn’t just for email: It also includes files you’ve saved to your Google Drive and Google Photos.

If you often send or receive messages that contain large files such as videos, or if you find yourself uploading a lot of photos and videos to your Google Photos, then it won’t be long before you see the “Account storage is full” notification. This means that you will no longer be able to send or receive emails from this account, so you will want to act ASAP.

A quick solution is to upgrade to a Google One account. Even if you choose the cheapest plan — 100GB for $20 a year — you’ll still end up paying to store old emails you may no longer need.

If you don’t want to buy more storage, you can delete your old emails. You can reclaim a surprising amount of storage space by trashing large files. Gmail makes it easy for you to identify and delete files by size. However, that option may seem boring; you probably don’t want to spend hours poring over books from the past decade or more, deciding which memories to keep and which to get rid of forever.

There is always the option to download large files to your desktop before you remove them from your Google account, but at some point, you will probably face the same problem with your local files and have to manage the storage space on your device.

This brings us to our “nuclear option:” Transferring all your emails to a new Gmail account.

How to transfer your Gmail messages to a new email account

Before you start the Gmail transfer process, we recommend that you make a backup of your emails. You can do this by downloading your emails to your computer or external hard drive. You can delete the backup after you’re done transferring emails to your new account if you like, but it’s always a good idea to have an extra copy stored locally.

To back up your Gmail messages, go to Google Takeout. Using our test Gmail account with about 75,000 messages, we got a download from Google Takeout in about 2 hours.

Once you’ve backed up your emails, you’re ready to start forwarding them. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Start by logging into your original Gmail account, click the “gear” icon in the top right and click See all settings.

2. Select the POP/IMAP forwarding tab, and select an option Enable POP for all mail (POP stands for Post Office Protocol).

3. You will have a few options below When messages are accessed via POP. To automatically delete emails from your original account after transfer, select delete a copy of Gmail.

4. Select Save Changes.

Now it’s time to create your new account and send all your messages there:

If you haven’t already done so, create your own brand new, inbox-zero Gmail account — we’ll call this your archive account.

1. Sign in to your new archive account, click the gear icon at the top and select See all settings.

2. Select the Accounts and Import tab at the top, and select Add a mail account next to Check mail from other accounts.

3. In the pop-up window, enter the name of your first Gmail account. Select The next one.

4. Select Import emails from my other account (POP3)againchoose The next one again.

5. Enter the password for your original Gmail account. You may also be required to create a Google app password (see note below).

6. Select 995 under the Port.

7. Check these 3 boxes: Always use a secure connection (SSL) when downloading mail, Label incoming messages, Archive incoming messages (Skip Inbox)

8. Select Add an account.

You will probably need to create a Google app password to forward Gmail messages

We tested this Gmail message forwarding process twice, and both times the default password for Gmail accounts didn’t work. After some research, we decided that we would need to create a temporary “app password” to sync the accounts.

Google app passwords are 16-character passcodes created for “less secure” apps or devices to access your Google account. They work exactly the same as your Google password.

If your regular Google password doesn’t work for syncing Gmail accounts, visit to create an app password. Just create a password — we used “Forward Bulk Email” — and hit the Create button. You will get a pop-up window with your 16-character passcode.

Once you’ve created an app password, go back to step 6 of the instructions above and use that new app password instead of your regular password.

Important: Google will display your app password only once. After you create it, you won’t be able to ask to see it again, so make sure you write it down or else record it after it’s created.

Google’s own Help Center states that “app passwords are not recommended and are not required in most cases.” So when you’re done transferring your Gmail messages, we recommend that you remove your app’s password.

What happens after my Gmail accounts are synced?

Once you have successfully linked your new archive Gmail account to your original account, your emails should start transferring automatically. The process can take several hours or days, depending on how many emails you have.

In our test account with about 75,000 messages, we found that it took Gmail about 2 full days to transfer them all from the original account to the new archived mail account.

Important: After transferring your Gmail messages to your archived mail account, your original Gmail account will put all those messages in the trash folder, which you will have to empty manually. Deleting those 75,000 messages from the trash took about an hour.

Before transferring Gmail messages, our test account was using just over 12GB, or 80%, of Google’s free 15GB. After the transfer, the account was only using 0.66GB, of which 0.06GB was from Gmail.

Which Gmail messages will not be forwarded?

We found that Gmail forwarded all of our messages except for two categories — Draft and Spam.

You will need to decide what to do with your Drafts manually. Spam messages are automatically deleted every 30 days, so you can let Gmail handle that, or you can manually go into the Spam folder after forwarding your email and delete or forward those messages.

Once all your emails are imported into your new account, enjoy a zero inbox. You’ve given your first account a new lease on life.

Right now, there are two final steps: you’ll want to stop the automatic transfer process so you can continue using your original account, and you’ll want to remove that app password if you have to.

1. Log in to your new account, log in to yours Settings and choose See all settings.

2. Select the Accounts and Import tab, and select delete in your original account (under Check mail from other accounts.)

3. When you are told that Confirm to delete the mail accountchoose OK.

If you had to create a Google app password and want to delete it now, go back and click the trash icon next to the password you created.

Congratulations, you’re done.

One last important note: Google will delete accounts that have been inactive for more than two years. So make sure you don’t completely discard all your old emails after forwarding them. If you don’t plan to regularly use your archive account to send email, you can still keep the account active by logging in at least once every two years.