How to Prevent Gmail from Deleting All Your Emails

Gmail Email Storage: How to Avoid Deletion

Gmail has the capacity to delete all the stored email over the years.
The reason is simple: space.
In the world of technology, storage space is the new gold.
While it is clear when buying a smartphone that the price tends to increase with memory capacity, the same does not apply to Gmail.

Understanding Email Deletion Process

An Apple customer is more accustomed to the idea of purchasing extra space to store all their material, from photos to documents, while on Android it is less common.
However, Google also offers a limit of digital storage, exceeding which purchasing plans for additional GB of memory are offered.

Google combines documents, photos, and emails in a single memory space, which forms the basis of the potential deletion of all the emails in Gmail when the storage space runs out.
What can be done to avoid losing data present in emails?

Preventing Email Deletion by Google

Gmail deletes all or part of the email when there is no more space to store other digital content.
Generally, Google offers a maximum of 15 GB of free digital storage space.
Beyond this limit, the system does not allow you to save or begins to delete very old data.

In the 15 GB offered by Google, the following files are archived: Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail, and others.
While this space is usually sufficient for the average lifespan of a smartphone (2-3 years), with heavier usage of Google services or automatic cloud synchronization, the memory can run out quickly.
What happens then?

If the limit is reached, you are no longer able to add files, save photos, send or receive emails.
After a certain period of time, Google proceeds to delete all the emails.

The deletion of emails is not instantaneous.
Google warns its customers when the archive is about to fill up or is completely full.
At that point, the message received indicates that it is not possible to save additional files.
The only alternative is to delete photos, documents, or emails.

When clicking on the banner message indicating the reached GB limit, the phone redirects to “Settings” and the “Memory” section.
Several options are then offered to clear the memory, such as deleting some data, deactivating apps, removing automatic synchronization, and more.

For Gmail, the solution is even simpler: just delete all the messages in the trash and spam folders (after a quick check).
There are several methods to free up memory, but one lesser-known method involves sorting emails by file size.
In the Gmail search bar, type “size:10mb” or “larger_than:10mb” (or any size) to display emails with attachments larger than the specified size in the search.
This way, you can select and delete the heavier files.