Tips to increase free storage for Google accounts

Each Google account will have 15GB to store emails in Gmail, Google Drive data and photos in Google+ Photos. However, some of the following simple steps will help you increase your storage for your Google account at no extra cost.

Check storage capacity

You can see the amount of free space left on the Google Drive cloud storage service site.

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The above website will tell you exactly how much Google services (Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos) you are using are currently taking up how much storage space is available. From this information, you will know which services you should "clean up" to get more space.

Delete unnecessary emails in Gmail

Everything in your Gmail account costs storage. Attachments can be the main culprit, but emails themselves will also cost you storage. Emails do not have attachments that are just plain text and don't take up too much space, but if you have too many emails, they will cost you a lot of storage.

Gmail itself cannot help you clean up your mailbox. From the web interface, you have no way of knowing how many kilobytes / megabyte each email in Gmail is consuming. To make room in Gmail, you'll have to use measures like:

- Use the keyword "has: attachment" in the Gmail search box. This way you can detect emails with attachments and delete them if needed.

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- Use email management software that supports IMAP protocol (Gmail protocol), such as Mozilla Thunderbird . This way you can easily manage how many KB each email takes.

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- Use Find Big Mail service (a 3rd party service) to find large emails. This way, you will not need to install software like Thunderbird and will only allow this service to access your mailbox to scan, without providing a password.

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Convert text files into Google Docs

Google Drive has two important roles.Firstly, this service is where all your Google Docs documents are stored. Second, this service works like Dropbox : A cloud storage service. So there are two points to keep in mind if you want to save storage space on Google Drive:

- Google Docs documents, including Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Drawings and Forms do not waste memory for your account. You can save as many Google Docs as you want.

- All Office file formats from PDF to * .doc and * .xls files of Microsoft Office, will make you waste storage space in Google Drive.

Therefore, you might consider converting your files from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice format to Google Docs to save space. To do this, just right-click on the corresponding file in Google Drive, select Open with and then select the Google Docs application . Google Docs will create a copy of the file you just opened in Google Docs format and can delete the old file.

You can choose to convert uploaded files to Google Docs format (choose Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format ) when you start uploading your text files.

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Delete unnecessary files on Google Drive

To find the files that take up the most storage space on Google Drive, select all the files in your account by checking the box above the file list, then select the Sort button and choose Quota Used (Quota use). Google Drive will organize your files according to their size, and you can delete large files that you don't need.

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Please note that deleted files will continue to consume your storage space unless you empty your trash. Like Gmail, Google Drive will automatically delete the trash after 30 days, but you should choose to empty the trash immediately to recover the storage.

Delete old versions of the archive file

In case you edit files on Google Drive, the old versions of these files will also be saved, this is also a factor that consumes storage space.

To check old versions of a data file, right-click on the file and select Manage revisions . You select the X button to delete the old version and recover the storage capacity.

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Option to download photos with small size

You are not limited to the number of photos uploaded to the Google+ Photos service (formerly known as Picasa Web Albums), if they meet the following criteria:

- If you have a Google+ account, all photos with a resolution of less than 2048x2048 pixels will not be charged to the capacity in your account.

- If you don't have a Google+ account, you can upload 800x800 pixel photos in unlimited numbers.

To check if the photos are retained in the resolution when you save them to Google+ Photos, open the Google+ settings page, find the Photos section and check the Upload my photos at full size option. (Upload photos at full size) is in active state.

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If this feature is not enabled, your photos when uploaded to Google+ via the browser will automatically be minimized and will not waste your Google memory. If you want to save the image at its native resolution, you will have to accept sacrificing your memory.

In case you use the Google+ app on Android and the option to automatically upload photos to your Google+ account, the installation of uploading images at full size will be enabled by default. In order for the Google+ application to automatically transfer images to small sizes before uploading, select Settings in the Google+ application, select Auto Backup and select Photo Size . Choose the usual small size (Standard Size).

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In case you run out of space on Google Drive, all uploaded photos will be automatically transferred to normal resolution.

Reduce size and delete image files

You can retrieve photos that are being saved on Google+ Photos and reduce their size to save storage space. You will have to do this manually: Download all the pictures according to this path, then find large-sized photos and use tools like Photoshop or Microsoft Office to minimize the size of them. After that, you can delete old photos on Google+ and upload new photos.

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In addition, you can also delete corrupted snapshots. Chances are, you currently have so many photos if you choose to automatically save photos from smartphone cameras to Google+.

Finally, remember that only the files you save at 3 Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos services consume memory. Videos saved on YouTube, events saved in Google Calendar and synced Android data will not be charged to 15GB for free.