Email quota exceeded: solution

I’ve exceeded the email quota and continually get the annoying message. Obviously, I don’t want to delete the important messages I have. What is the best solution for me?
Sandi Gomez

You can quickly solve the email quota exceeded issue by either getting additional storage or freeing up some space… not necessarily by deleting messages. Once you get to know what they are, you can choose the one that suits your requirements. Please understand that these are my suggestions – they may or may not work for you.

But before I detail those two options, here are a few things you need to check at your account.

• Make sure the folder containing the deleted emails is empty.
• The sent folder typically stores the messages that have been dispatched from the account. Are these messages as important as the ones you’ve received?
• Some services may also let you perform a maintenance operation which involves getting rid of email attachments in old messages. This may turn out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. As you probably know, the bulk of the storage space on your account is taken up by email attachments especially the large video and audio files.

Get more space on your email account

The easiest way to overcome the email quota exceeded issue to is get more space. But this is possible only when such a provision exists. Typically, companies charge a small fees to increase the storage space on the email account. Please consult your service provider for details.

Move the messages from the server

Your inbox on the server can also be emptied by either downloading the messages or forwarding them to another account. Let us look at these two options.

Assuming POP (Post Office Protocol) access is available, you can download messages using an email program. The added benefit is that the message would be available even without an internet connection. Most email programs can do this job quite easily. And no, you don’t need to get one as, most likely, an email program would already be installed on your computer.

To download email to your computer the account has to be first set up in the program. This web site has step by step instructions of this process for some of the most popular email clients – use the search function. Please note, messages once downloaded to the local system will be deleted from the server by the email program. If this doesn’t happen by default, change the settings in the chosen program.

The downside of using an email program is that messages would no longer be available via webmail! This may be a big disadvantage for people who like to retain messages on the server so that they can check the account from any computer and not just the one to which the messages have been downloaded.

The alternative to using an email program and avoiding the problem it creates is to use message forwarding. This entails transferring the email to another service that offers more space – unlimited storage space, perhaps? Email can be forwarded manually or you can “add” your account to the other service (requires POP access).