How to Find Large Emails In Gmail And Clean Up Your Inbox

If you’ve been using Google services like Gmail and Google Drive, there is a good chance you’re getting close to 15GB Google gives you for free.

Benefits of Cleaning Up Your Email Inbox

A cluttered inbox can make it difficult to find important emails and can distract you from other important tasks. By keeping your inbox clean and organized, you can quickly find the information you need and stay focused on what you need to do.

A lot of old and large emails with attachments you will never need to see can take up a lot of storage space on your email server or device. By deleting large files and old emails, you can free up space and prevent your account from becoming overloaded.

There area many benefits of deleting old emails and keeping your email box clean.

There are several reasons why it’s important to keep your email inbox organized including

Increased productivity. When your inbox is cluttered and disorganized, it can be difficult to find the information you need, and you can waste a lot of time searching for specific emails. By keeping your inbox organized, you can quickly find the information you need and stay focused on your work.

Better communication. Organizing your emails can help you prioritize and respond to important messages in a timely manner, which can improve your communication with colleagues, clients, and other contacts.

Better security. By regularly cleaning out your inbox, you can reduce the risk of sensitive information being exposed or falling into the wrong hands.

Increased storage space. A lot of old and unnecessary emails can take up a lot of storage space on your email server or device. By deleting large files and old emails, you can free up space and prevent your account from becoming overloaded.

Easier to find important information. When you have an organized inbox, it’s much easier to find important information, whether it’s a message from a client, a confirmation email or a report that you need to read.

Better mental state. I don’t know about you, but my disorganized and cluttered inbox makes me overwhelmed and stressed. By deleting old files and keeping it organized you can reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed and increase focus and clarity in your work.

VIDEO: Quickly & Easily Clean Up Your Gmail Inbox

How To Find and Delete Large File Emails from Your Inbox

To check how much free storage space you have look into the right corner when you’re in your Gmail or other Google apps.

If you are getting close to your limit, the culprit most likely to be your Gmail. Most emails don’t take that much space, however, when someone sends you a big image file or pdf it counts against your allocated storage.

This means that over time you have many big files sitting in your Gmail box taking up space.

So below are quick tips on how to clean up and sort your Gmail inbox so you can delete them and free up valuable space.

Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t give the option to sort your emails. But that’s ok because Gmail has an excellent search function, which you can use to find all types of emails based on the size, the date, and other criteria.

So how do you find emails and filter your emails within your Gmail account?

Option 1

First is the quick search box. Use the dropdown selection box Gmail gives to help you with your search.

You can find it right in the search box at the top of your Gmail.

Click on the arrow and you will see a box with different options you can choose from.

You can find images based on their size and also filter them by date, label, and whether they have an attachment or not.

So if you need to find large emails, select size and date (the longest period you can choose is 1 year) and click search. This will give you a list of emails larger than 5MB within the last 12 months.

If you want to go further, you have to do the search again, but this time select last year as a date.

Option 2

The second option is to use search operators

These search operators do the same thing as the search box but allow you to use other criteria for filtering your emails.

Here  is the list of all search operators you can use when searching your Gmail Box (link)

So how do you use these search operators to clean up and delete the emails you don’t want.

When you access your inbox, at the top you will see a search box.

You can then type pre-defined search operators into the search box to find what you need. Below the filters, you’ll probably use most frequently to find emails

To search for emails that are marked important use > is:important

To look for emails during a certain time period use the following operators: after, before: older; newer: So to find emails before 2020, you would type: before:2020

Also, if you notice, after you do the search, at the top you will also notice additional filtering options you can further use to narrow down the results.

To find large emails, you can use size operators: larger; and smaller; So if you need to find large emails, type: larger:2M

If you’re using tabs to organize your email, you can use the filter category to search emails placed in those categories. (ex: category:primary).

Finally, you can also combine filters to drill down even more. So if you want to clean up your Gmail and want to find and remove large emails that you received before 2020 you would type: before:2020 larger:3M and hit search.

I hope this helps you get a better handle on your email. By using the search box and search operators, you can quickly locate and delete old emails that are taking too much space.

Top Email Tips For Keeping Your Inbox Clean

1. Unsubscribe from emails you no longer want to receive.
2. Create folders and labels to organize your emails.
3. Use the search function to quickly find and delete old or unnecessary emails.
4. Consider using an email management tool, such as Boomerang or Sanebox, to help with organizing and prioritizing your inbox.
5. Set aside a specific time each day to check and respond to emails, rather than constantly checking throughout the day.
6. Use the “Archive” feature to remove emails from your inbox without deleting them, but still keep them accessible in case you need them later.
7. Regularly clean up your inbox, deleting any old or unnecessary emails, to keep your inbox manageable.
8. Use filters to automatically sort and categorize incoming emails, so they don’t clutter up your inbox.
9. Use the “Mark as Spam” button to flag emails that you don’t want to receive, which will help your email provider filter out unwanted emails in the future.
10. Look for newsletters you’ve been continuously ignoring
11. Delete or archive emails you can’t take action on anymore
12. Implement the two-minute rule

Conclusion

Having too many old emails with huge attachments can drastically reduce your email storage space. By periodically reviewing and deleting these large files and old emails, you can free up space and prevent your account from becoming overloaded.

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