Thoughts on reducing storage with Gmail?

Forum Moderators: phranque

Message Too Old, No Replies

Thoughts on reducing storage with Gmail?

csdude55

6:13 am on Jan 24, 2022 (gmt 0)

I really want to move all of my emails to online, so if I have another computer meltdown it won't be a problem.

I've been using Gmail for awhile, with my domain's email forwarded to the Gmail and my server's SMTP as the outgoing; meaning, everyone else sees me@mydomain.com, but it's really going to Gmail.

To date I've been using Outlook to archive emails locally, but that's what I'd like to eliminate.

Gmail gives 15G of free storage, and I'm currently using 9.33G. Then looking at the .PST files from Outlook, they are cumulatively 20.8G! Now I'm not sure how much of that is bloat from Outlook, but still, I think it's going to be well above the 15G.

Short of paying $2 /month for more storage, any suggestions on how to reduce storage?

I already have 1TB of cloud storage with OneDrive, but I'm not sure if there's a way to archive emails from Gmail to OneDrive?

engine

9:37 am on Jan 24, 2022 (gmt 0)

You can export your gmail, and it's worth considering that if you want to delete documents older than (insert date).

[support.google.com...]

Do watch out, however, Google is slowly moving to a subscription model Google G Suite Legacy Free Editions to Become Paid [webmasterworld.com]

Nothing to say it'll charge for gmail, just yet, but....

not2easy

1:02 pm on Jan 24, 2022 (gmt 0)

I 'print' to .pdf any emails I need a copy of and then archive them outside of my email client. It would be quite a task if you needed to have copies of everything but they would be in a format you could read or print from any device.

csdude55

1:55 am on Jan 25, 2022 (gmt 0)

I have about 20 years worth of emails... 99% of them are irrelevant, but every once in a while I'll have an email from an old client and I need to go back in time to review what we've talked about. Storing them locally is fine (I have a 1TB SSD now), but now I have this fear of losing all of it.

It looks like I might be able to IMAP to Gmail in Outlook, and then IMAP to Outlook.com in Outlook (with 50G), then I can use Gmail for sending/receiving email and then move them to the IMAPed Outlook.com account for permanent storage. That's a cumbersome pain, honestly, but it would (well, should) work and wouldn't (shouldn't) cost anything more.

Is it worth the extra work to save $24 /year? I dunno, haven't quite decided on that one.

tangor

6:25 am on Jan 25, 2022 (gmt 0)

Setting aside the caveats of having a third party in charge of your product (emails) via "free" and chancing the time that IS coming: pay or else, get rid of the "99% of them are irrelevant" and don't worry about file sizes. :)

The 99% you get rid of chuck onto a thumb drive and put it in the drawer.

As for Outlook's size, run a compact after you have deleted all the irrelevant AND delete the deleted.... you'd be amazed at how much space you can save.

And not spend a dime.

ASIDE: ir2 an email packrat ... some of which go back to the 1980s... whew!

csdude55

7:35 pm on Jan 25, 2022 (gmt 0)

If only I knew WHICH of those emails were in the 99%! LOL

Let me explain with an example. A couple of weeks ago I had an old client email me. This was someone from 12, maybe 13 years ago. So before I did anything I reviewed our old emails to see what they liked, what they didn't, and what caused the relationship to end. I saw that the owner was a huge Civil War buff, so I was able to slide in a few vague references during the presentation.

It might seem small, but that little bit of information might have been the difference between getting the job or losing it.

So you see, I don't want to accidentally lose any of it, and really can't print it off or anything and it not be easily searchable.

If money wasn't so darn tight these days, I should really just bite the bullet and pay for Google's storage. I'm really just concerned about future price increases and having a bad month where the money just isn't there.

tangor

3:26 am on Jan 26, 2022 (gmt 0)

Agree to all above ... but surely you did delete emails from the outlook PST from time to time over the years---so RUN THAT COMPACT to see what is Really There.

csdude55

5:02 am on Jan 26, 2022 (gmt 0)

Nope... well, except for spam and whatnot.

Right now I haven't set up Outlook 365 on the new computer, I was hoping to eliminate it altogether. After going back and forth with Microsoft a dozen times and getting nothing but cookie cutter replies, I'm kinda leaning towards paying for 100G of Google storage and being done with it... I've spent more trying to save money than I would have saved, yaknowhatImean?