Troubleshooting
Your mailbox is full
Send feedbackYour mail and your Drive files share one storage allowance. You're warned as it fills, and when it runs out some things stop — though less than you might expect.
What happens when it's full
The storage meter in the sidebar warns you at 85%, 90% and 95%. At 100% it's full.
| Still works | Stops working |
|---|---|
| Receiving mail — messages keep arriving | Sending a message with an attachment |
| Sending a message with no attachment | Uploading new files to Drive |
| Reading, searching and replying |
You won't miss incoming mail
A full mailbox doesn't bounce the mail people send you — it keeps arriving. Running out of space is a problem to fix, not an emergency.
Attachment limits apply either way
Separately from storage, a single file can be up to 20 MB and one message up to 20 MB in total. A refused attachment on a mailbox that isn't full is usually this, not storage.
Free up space
Work through these in order — the first two usually recover the most.
- Delete big attachments: Search for large mail with
has:attachment larger:10M, then delete what you don't need. See Searching your mail. - Empty Trash: Deleted mail sits in Trash for 30 days and still uses space until then. Open Trash and choose Empty Trash to reclaim it now.
- Empty Spam: Spam counts towards your storage too, and it's the easiest thing to clear without losing anything you want.
- Tidy Drive: Mail and Drive share the same allowance, so removing large Drive files frees mail storage. See NevTan Drive & large attachments.
Deleting mail isn't instant
Space comes back when the message leaves Trash, not when you delete it. If the meter hasn't moved, empty Trash.
Get more storage
If there's nothing left to clear, an admin can add storage to a mailbox from Admin → Subscription → Storage using Increase storage on its row. Extra storage is added on top of what the plan gives that mailbox and renews monthly.
Moving the whole workspace to a package with more storage per mailbox is the other route — see Plans & pricing and Storage & usage.