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Email: How to Handle "Mailbox Full"
The Problem
Some email services offer unlimited online email storage, but most have a large but finite amount of storage for your messages. This is separate from the offline (“local”) storage on your computer or mobile device.
If enough megabytes (or gigabytes) of messages accumulate, that online storage area for your email can become full. When that happens:
- Your email server will probably start to reject all new incoming email messages, and it will likely send “failure to deliver” or “mailbox full” or “over quota” messages back to the people sending you those messages.
- It may not also notify you that this is happening.
- It may also refuse to let you send new messages as well.
Some email servers may also notify you in advance, for example, when that online storage reaches 80% or 90% of its capacity. However, you may also receive fake messages like this, so I recommend that you verify any such claims before taking any action.
Note that this issue is not about the number of messages in your online storage, but about the total size of those messages.
Read on for my advice on what to do if this happens to you, or to someone else.
Terminology
In general there are two different types of email storage:
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Online email storage: This is the space on your email server where it stores your messages “in the cloud.” If this area gets full, that will trigger a “mailbox full” situation.
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Local email storage: This is the space on your computer (or iPhone, iPad, or Android) where your regular email program stores your messages.
In general there are two different ways that you might access your email:
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Webmail: This is the website where you may be accessing your email server directly and managing your email, using web browser software on your computer or mobile device. Popular email websites include aol.com, gmail.com, godaddy.com, msn.com, outlook.com, rcn.com, xfinity.com (Comcast), etc. Popular web browsers include Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc.
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Regular email program: This is the software that you may be using to manage your email on your computer or mobile device. Popular programs include Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, the “Mail” app on your smartphone or tablet, etc.
What to do when someone else’s email becomes full
After sending a message to a friend or colleague or company, you may get a “failure” or “bounce” message back from their email server. Somewhere in the body of that message (it might be near the phrase “SMTP error”) it tells you why your message wasn’t delivered.
There are many possible reasons (no such account, no such server, message delivery delayed, possible spam, etc.), but if it says something like “mailbox full” or “over quota,” then I suggest that you tell your recipient that this happened, but you’ll need to use another method, e.g., a phone call, text message, an alternate email address if they have one, etc.
What to do if you find out that your email has become full
If a friend or colleague tells you that the emails that they’re sending to you are bouncing back to them with “mailbox full” errors, then I recommend that you:
- Sign into your email account’s webmail using a web browser and confirm that your email storage is full. (Most regular email programs can’t tell you this.) If it is, consider doing one or more of the following steps. If it isn’t, your friend may be looking at a fake notice.
- If you have a paid (premium) email account, confirm that your bill is paid up. If not, your credit card may have changed, expired, or been canceled, which may in turn have reverted your email to a free account, which probably has much less online storage. Your webmail may then report that it’s much more than 100% full.
- You could choose to pay for additional online email storage, if your email server offers that option.
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Reduce the amount of online email storage you’re using, either by deleting messages you no longer need (and then emptying your email Trash to free up the space) or moving them to local storage on your computer. The most efficient approach is to start with the largest messages (typically ones with large attachments). Another approach is to delete or move all messages that you’ve received and sent in previous years.
- After you’ve tried one or more of these approaches, sign into your webmail again and confirm that your email storage is no longer full.
How you might do each of these techniques depends on the way you prefer to access your email.
Case 1: If you use the Gmail.com webmail for a consumer account or a commercial Google Workspace account
- To see how full your storage is: In any mailbox (label) like Inbox, Sent, Drafts, etc., scroll to the bottom. Below the list of messages you’ll see a phrase like “5.01 GB of 15 GB used.” These numbers refer to your entire account, not just that mailbox.
- To check whether your premium bill is paid up (if any), confirm your credit card info is current, and pay for additional storage: Click to access your Google Account, then click “Payments & subscriptions” on the left.
- To find large messages: Gmail.com only sorts messages by Date, newest first; you cannot sort by anything else. However, you can search for messages using a variety of criteria. In the “Search mail” field at the top, click the “horizontal lines” icon at the right to reveal the advanced search criteria, then for “Size” choose “greater than” and “1 MB,” and for “Search” either choose a single mailbox (like Inbox) or “All Mail” or “Mail & Spam & Trash.” You might also turn on the “Has attachment” checkbox. Or, you can use search keywords. To search using all three of these criteria you would type (note the absence of spaces after the colons): larger:1M in:anywhere has:attachment
- To find messages on or before a given date: Similarly, in that same advanced search criteria, use the “Date within” choices, or you can use search keywords. For example, to find all messages in 2022 you would type (note the absence of spaces after the colons): after:2021/12/31 before:2023/1/1
- To delete messages from the server: You would simply select those messages, delete them, and then (in order to free up space on the server), go to the Trash and Empty it.
- To move messages to local storage on your computer: You can’t, apart from downloading email attachments to your computer. You’ll need to use a regular email program with the IMAP protocol.
Case 2: If you use webmail and your account is not with Gmail
- To see how full your storage is: This depends on the webmail. For example, webmail.earthlink.net shows a phrase like “38% of 1100 MB used” at the top left, but on xfinity.com you have to click the “gear” icon at the top right to reveal that information.
- To check whether your premium bill is paid up (if any), confirm your credit card info is current, and pay for additional storage: This depends on the webmail. You might find it under “Account” or “Settings.”
- To find large messages: In general, in any given mailbox you would probably click on the “Size” column title to sort by that column; you might have to click it again to sort by largest first. If you can’t sort by Size, you might be able to search or filter for messages with attachments.
- To find messages on or before a given date: In any given mailbox you would probably click on the “Date” column, and then scroll to find messages within the given date range.
- To delete messages from the server: You would simply select those messages, delete them, and then (in order to free up space on the server), go to the Trash or Deleted Items and Empty it.
- To move messages to local storage on your computer: You can’t. You’ll need to use a regular email program with the IMAP protocol.
Case 3: If you use a regular email program (or an email mobile app) with the IMAP protocol
If the email program on your computer uses IMAP, it will synchronize messages with your server, so any messages you delete will disappear from the server, and any messages you send, any Drafts you create, etc., will also be stored in the corresponding folders on the server.
- To see how full your storage is: Your regular email program probably can’t show you this. You’ll need to sign in to your webmail to find this.
- To check whether your premium bill is paid up (if any), confirm your credit card info is current, and pay for additional storage: You can’t. You’ll need to sign in to your webmail to find this.
- To find large messages: In general, in any given mailbox you would probably click on the “Size” column title to sort by that column; you might have to click it again to sort largest first.
- To find messages on or before a given date: In any given mailbox you would probably click on the “Date” column, and then scroll to find messages within the date range you want.
- To delete messages from the server: You would simply select those messages, delete them, and then (in order to free up space on the server), go to the Trash or Deleted Items and Empty it. Your email program would then use the IMAP protocol to tell your email server to do the same on its end.
- To move messages to local storage on your computer: You would first need to create one or more local mailboxes (folders). Then you find the messages you want to move, select them, then click-and-drag them from a server folder into a local folder. Your email program would then tell your server to remove those messages.
Case 4: If you use a regular email program (or an email mobile app) with the POP protocol
If the email program on your computer uses POP, when you check for new mail, any new messages will be copied from the server’s Inbox into your program’s Inbox, and then (depending on your program’s “Leave on server” settings) your program will tell your server to either delete all of those new messages from its Inbox, or keep the most recent 7 (or 14 or 30, etc.) days of messages and delete any that are older. Any messages that you send, drafts that you create, etc. will be private to your computer, i.e., the server will not have copies of them.
- To see how full your storage is: Your regular email program probably can’t tell you this. You’ll need to sign in to your webmail to find this.
- To check whether your premium bill is paid up (if any), confirm your credit card info is current, and pay for additional storage: You can’t. You’ll need to sign in to your webmail to find this.
- To find large messages: In general, in any given mailbox you would probably click on the “Size” column title to sort by that column; you might have to click it again to sort largest first. However, since your regular email program can’t delete them from the server, at best doing this will only serve as a guide; in order to actually free up space on the server, you’ll need to sign into your webmail.
- To find messages on or before a given date: You would probably click on the “Date” column, and then scroll to find messages within the date range you want. As above, this will only serve as a guide; in order to actually free up space on the server, you’ll need to sign into your webmail.
- To delete messages from the server: Because you’re using the POP protocol, your regular email program can’t delete individual messages that you choose. You’ll need to sign in to your webmail.
- To move messages to local storage on your computer: Because you’re using the POP protocol, all of the messages in your email program are already stored locally on your computer.
Where to go from here
As always, if this seems too complicated to manage on your own, I recommend that you find someone you know and trust to help you.
In the searches below, replace “E” with the name of the email service you’re using (e.g., “Gmail,” “Xfinity,” “MSN,” “Hotmail,” etc.) and replace “P” with the name of the email program you’re using on your computer.
- google: E webmail
- google: E mailbox full
- google: P imap vs. pop
- google: mobile app sort by size
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