Gmail Storage Full? Use Nuclear Option for Automatic Inbox Zero
Does your Gmail inbox contain thousands of unread emails? Have you run out of the 15GB of free storage that comes with your account?
Maybe you’ve been meaning to clean up your Gmail inbox, but the thought of having to dig through tons of old messages can be daunting. Luckily, there’s an easy way to free up storage space on your Google account and still keep all of your old email.
All you need to do is create a second Gmail account to store all of your current messages. There’s no limit on the number of free Google accounts you can have, meaning you can set one up as a dedicated archive account and then transfer all of your old emails to it.
Transferring your Gmail messages is also a great strategy if you have a school or work Gmail account that you permanently lose access to. Most universities and companies will deactivate your account once you’re no longer a student or employee, so if you want to view your old messages and files, you’ll 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 won’t take long at long, but it depends on how many messages you have. We’ll walk you through the simple process of transferring your emails from your old account to a new one (including the important step of backing everything up first).
For more information about Gmail, read about the new AI summaries or how to use emoji reactions.
How much data can you store in Gmail?
15GB of free storage may sound like a lot when you first create a Gmail account, but it fills up fast. For starters, the 15GB isn’t just used for email: it also includes the files you have stored in your Google Drive and Google Photos.
If you frequently send or receive messages that contain large files like videos, or if you find yourself uploading a lot of photos and videos to your Google Photos, it won’t be long before you see the message “Account storage is full.” This means you can no longer send or receive emails on this account, so you’ll need to take action as soon as possible.
The quickest solution is to upgrade to a Google One account. But even if you go with the cheapest plan — 100GB for $20/year — you’ll still end up paying money to store old emails you may not even need anymore.
If you don’t want to buy extra storage, you can always delete your old emails. You can reclaim a surprising amount of storage space by tossing large files into the trash. Gmail makes it easy to identify and delete files by size. Still, that option may seem like a hassle; you may not want to spend hours sifting through correspondence from a decade or more ago, deciding which memories to keep and which to delete forever.
You can always choose to download large files to your desktop before deleting them from your Google account. However, at some point you’ll likely run into the same problem with your local files and need to manage your device’s storage space.
And that brings us to our “nuclear option”: transferring all of 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 back up your emails. You can do this by downloading your emails to your computer or an external hard drive. You can delete the backup after you have finished transferring the emails to your new account, but it is always a good idea to have an extra copy stored locally.
To back up your Gmail messages, go to Google TakeawayUsing our test Gmail account, which contained about 75,000 messages, we got a download of Google Takeout in about 2 hours.
Once you have a copy of your emails saved, you are ready to transfer them. Here are the steps you need to take:
Start by logging into your original Gmail account, click the gear icon at the top right and click View all settings.
Select the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab and then select the option Enable POP for all email (POP stands for Post Office Protocol).
You have several options under When messages are opened with POP. To automatically delete the emails from your original account after the transfer, select delete gmail’s copy.
Select Saving Changes.
Now it’s time to create a new account and move all your posts there:
If you haven’t done so already, please create your brand new, inbox-zero Gmail account — this is what we call your archive account.
Log in to your new archive account, click the gear icon at the top and select View all settings.
Select the Invoices and importing tab at the top and then select Add an email account next Check email from other accounts.
In the pop-up window, enter the name of your original Gmail account. Select Next one.
Select Import emails from my other account (POP3)AndSelecting Next one again.
Enter your original Gmail account password. You may also need to create a Google app password (see note below).
Select 995 under Haven.
Check these 3 boxes: Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving email, Incoming Messages Label, Archive incoming messages (Skip Inbox)
Select Add Account.
You will likely need to create a password for the Google app to transfer Gmail messages
We tested this Gmail message transfer process twice and both times the default password for the Gmail accounts did not work. After some research we found out that we needed to create a temporary “app password” to sync the accounts.
Google app passwords are 16-digit access codes 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 is not working for syncing Gmail accounts, visit to create an app password. Simply create a name for the password — we used “Transfer Bulk Email” — and then hit the Create button. You’ll get a pop-up window with your new 16-digit passcode.
Once you have created the app password, go back to step 6 of the instructions above and use that new app password in place of your usual password.
Important: Google only shows your app password once. Once you create it, you can’t ask to see it again, so write it down or otherwise record it after it’s created.
Google’s own Help Center states that “app passwords are not recommended and in most cases unnecessary.” So once you’re done transferring your Gmail messages, we recommend removing your app password.
What happens after my Gmail accounts are synced?
Once you have successfully linked your new Gmail archive account to your original account, your emails should be transferred automatically. The process can take a few 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 days to transfer all messages from the original account to the new archived email account.
Important: After you move your Gmail messages to your archived email account, your original Gmail account will put all of those messages in the Trash, which you will need to empty manually. Deleting those 75,000 messages from the Trash took about an hour.
Before we migrated Gmail messages, our test account used just over 12GB, or 80%, of Google’s free 15GB. After the migration, the account used just 0.66GB, of which 0.06GB came from Gmail.
Which Gmail messages are not transferred?
We discovered that Gmail had transferred all of our messages except for two categories: Drafts and Spam.
You’ll need to manually decide what to do with your drafts. Spam messages are automatically deleted every 30 days, so you can either let Gmail handle that, or go to the spam folder yourself after you’ve migrated your email and delete or forward those messages.
Once all your emails are imported to your new account, you will enjoy the experience of inbox zero. You have breathed new life into your original account.
At this point, 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 the app password if you were forced to create one.
Log in to your new account, go to your Institutions and select View all settings.
Select the Invoices and importing tab and then select to delete for your original account (under Check email from other accounts.)
When you are asked to Confirm the deletion of your email accountselect OK.
If you created a password for a Google app and now want to delete it, go back to and click the trash can icon next to the password you created.
Congratulations, you’re done!
One important final note: Google deletes accounts that have been inactive for more than two years, so make sure you don’t completely ignore all of your old emails after you migrate them. If you don’t plan on using your archive account to send emails regularly, you can still keep it active by logging in at least once every two years.
