Have you ever used up the 15GB of free storage that comes along with your Gmail account? Have you ever tried to delete just a few spammy emails or unsubscribe to these newsletters you stopped studying, however nonetheless discovered your self with hundreds of unread messages? Does the concept of cleansing out your Gmail inbox sound inconceivable? Earlier than you begin paying for further storage, learn on: there’s a simple approach to get your account again to inbox zero whereas retaining all of your outdated e mail.
All you want to do is create a second Gmail account to retailer your whole present messages. There isn’t any restriction on the variety of free Google accounts you may personal, which implies you may set one up as a devoted archive account, after which switch all of your outdated emails to it.
Transferring your Gmail messages can be a terrific technique if in case you have a faculty or enterprise Gmail account that you just will not have the ability to entry completely. Most universities and companies will deactivate your account as soon as you’re now not a pupil or worker, so if you wish to view your outdated messages and information, you may need to port them to a private account earlier than you lose entry.
Finishing the entire means of transferring your Gmail messages to a brand new account does not take too lengthy, however will probably be depending on simply what number of messages you’ve gotten. We’ll stroll you thru the straightforward means of transferring your emails out of your outdated account to a brand new one (together with the essential step of backing all the things up first).
For extra about Gmail, study its new AI summaries or learn how to use emoji reactions.
How a lot knowledge are you able to retailer on Gmail?
Fifteen gigabytes of free storage could sound like loads whenever you make a Gmail account, nevertheless it will get stuffed up rapidly. For starters, the 15GB is not simply used for e mail: it additionally consists of the information you’ve got saved in your Google Drive and Google Photographs.
In case you ceaselessly ship or obtain messages that comprise massive information comparable to movies, or if you end up importing lots of footage and movies to your Google Photographs, then it will not be lengthy earlier than you may see the “Account storage is full” notification. Which means that you’ll now not have the ability to ship or obtain emails on this account, so you may need to do one thing ASAP.
The quickest answer is to improve to a Google One account. Even in case you go for the least costly plan — 100GB for $20/12 months — you may nonetheless find yourself paying cash to retailer outdated emails that you just won’t even want anymore.
In case you do not need to purchase extra storage, you may at all times delete your outdated emails. You may get again a shocking quantity of cupboard space by placing massive information within the trash. Gmail makes it straightforward so that you can determine and delete information by dimension. Even so, that choice might sound tedious; possibly you do not need to spend hours sifting by correspondence from a decade or extra in the past, deciding which recollections to maintain and which to do away with endlessly.
There’s at all times the choice to obtain massive information to your desktop earlier than you delete them out of your Google account, however in some unspecified time in the future, you may most likely run into the identical subject along with your native information and need to handle the cupboard space in your machine.
This brings us to our “nuclear choice:” Transferring all of your emails to a brand new Gmail account.
The way to switch your Gmail messages to a brand new e mail account
Earlier than you begin the Gmail switch course of, we advocate that you just again up your emails. You are able to do this by downloading your emails both to your laptop or an exterior arduous drive. You may delete the backup after you end transferring the emails to your new account in case you like, nevertheless it’s at all times a good suggestion to have an additional copy saved regionally.
To again up your Gmail messages, go to Google Takeout. Utilizing our check Gmail account that held about 75,000 messages, we obtained a obtain from Google Takeout in about 2 hours.
As soon as you’ve got saved a duplicate of your emails, you are prepared to start transferring them. Listed here are the steps you want to take:
1. Begin by logging into your unique Gmail account, clicking the “gear” icon within the prime proper and clicking See all settings.
2. Choose the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab, after which choose the choice Allow POP for all mail (POP stands for Publish Workplace Protocol).
3. You will have a number of choices below When messages are accessed with POP. To robotically delete the emails out of your unique account after the switch, choose delete Gmail’s copy.
4. Choose Save Modifications.
Now it is time to create your new account and switch all of your messages there:
If you have not already completed so, create your model new, inbox-zero Gmail account — we’ll name this your archive account.
1. Login to your new archive account, click on the gear icon on the prime and choose See all settings.
2. Choose the Accounts and Import tab on the prime, after which choose Add a mail account subsequent to Test mail from different accounts.
3. Within the pop-up window, enter within the title of your unique Gmail account. Choose Subsequent.
4. Choose Import emails from my different account (POP3), andchoose Subsequent once more.
5. Enter the password of your unique Gmail account. You may also be required to create a Google app password (see observe under).
6. Choose 995 below Port.
7. Test these 3 bins: At all times use a safe connection (SSL) when retrieving mail, Label incoming messages, Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)
8. Choose Add Account.
You will most likely must create a Google app password to switch Gmail messages
We examined this Gmail message switch course of twice, and each instances the usual password for the Gmail accounts didn’t work. After a little bit of analysis, we decided that we might must create a brief “app password” to sync the accounts.
Google app passwords are 16-digit passcodes created for “much less safe” apps or units to entry your Google account. They work precisely like your Google password.
In case your common Google password does not work for syncing Gmail accounts, go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords to create an app password. Merely create a reputation for the password — we used “Switch Bulk Electronic mail” — after which hit the Create button. You will get a pop-up window along with your new 16-digit passcode.
As soon as you’ve got created the app password, return to step 6 of the directions above and use that new app password as an alternative of your normal password.
Necessary: Google will solely show your app password as soon as. After you’ve got created it, you may’t ask to see it once more, so make sure to write it down or in any other case report it after it has been created.
Google’s personal Assist Heart mentions that “app passwords aren’t really helpful and are pointless most often.” So when you’re completed transferring your Gmail messages, we advocate deleting your app password.
What occurs after my Gmail accounts are synced?
As soon as you’ve got efficiently linked your new Gmail archive account to your unique account, your emails ought to start to switch robotically. The method might take a number of hours or days, relying on what number of emails you’ve gotten.
In our check 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.
Necessary: 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 may must empty manually. Clearing out these 75,000 messages from the Trash took about an hour.
Earlier than transferring Gmail messages, our check account was utilizing slightly greater than 12GB, or 80%, of Google’s free 15GB. After transferring, the account was solely utilizing 0.66GB, of which 0.06GB was from Gmail.
What Gmail messages will not be transferred?
We discovered that Gmail transferred all of our messages besides for 2 classes — Drafts and Spam.
You will must determine what to do along with your Drafts manually. Spam messages are robotically deleted each 30 days, so you may let Gmail deal with that, or go into the Spam folder your self after transferring your mail and delete or ahead these messages.
As soon as your whole emails have been imported to your new account, benefit from the expertise of inbox zero. You have given your unique account a brand new lease on life.
At this level, there are two final steps: you may need to cease the automated switch course of so that you could proceed utilizing your unique account, and you will need to delete that app password in case you needed to make one.
1. Login to your new account, go into your Settings and choose See all settings.
2. Choose the Accounts and Import tab, after which choose delete in your unique account (below Test mail from different accounts.)
3. When prompted to Affirm delete mail account, choose OK.
In case you needed to create a Google app password and need to delete it now, return to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and click on the garbage can icon subsequent to the password you created.
Congrats, you are completed.
One essential remaining observe: 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. In case you do not plan to recurrently use your archive account to ship e mail, you may nonetheless hold the account energetic by signing in a minimum of as soon as each two years.
