These days, it’s pretty easy to exhaust the 15GB of free storage that comes with your Gmail account. If you forget to delete promotional messages from companies you no longer do business with, or lose track of all the newsletters you’ve subscribed to over the years, you can quickly find yourself with thousands of unread emails.
You may be planning to clean out your Gmail inbox, but the thought of sorting through countless old messages seems daunting. Luckily, there’s an easy way to free up storage space in your Google account while still keeping all your old emails.
All you need to do is create a second Gmail account to store all your current messages. There are no restrictions on the number of free Google accounts you can have, which means you can create one as a dedicated archive account and then transfer all your old emails to it.
Forwarding your Gmail messages is also a great strategy if you have a school or work Gmail account that you won’t be able to access permanently. Most universities and companies will deactivate your account once you’re no longer a student or employee, so if you want to view your old messages and files, you’ll need to forward them to a personal account before you lose access.
Completing the entire process of transferring your Gmail messages to a new account does not take Also This can take some time, but it will depend on how many messages you have. We’ll walk you through the simple process of transferring your emails from your old account to a new one (including the important step of backing up everything first).
To learn more about Gmail, check out its new AI summaries or how to use emoji reactions.
How much data can you store on Gmail?
15GB of free storage may seem like a lot when you first sign up for a Gmail account, but it fills up quickly. For starters, the 15GB isn’t just for emails: it also includes files you’ve saved to your Google Drive and Google Photos.
If you frequently send or receive messages with large files like videos, or if you upload a lot of photos and videos to your Google Photos account, you’ll soon see a notification that says “Account storage is full.” This means you’ll no longer be able to send or receive emails on this account, so you need to take action now.
The quickest solution is to upgrade to a Google One account. But even if you go with the cheapest plan (100GB for $20/year), you’ll still end up paying to store old emails you may no longer need.
If you don’t want to buy more storage, you can always delete your old emails. You can reclaim a surprising amount of storage space by moving large files to the trash. Gmail makes it easy to identify and delete files based on their size. Still, this option can seem like a hassle. Maybe you don’t want to spend hours going through correspondence from a decade or more ago, deciding which memories to keep and which to delete forever.
There is always the option to download large files to your desktop before deleting them from your Google account; but at some point, you will probably run into the same problem with your local files and need to manage storage space on your device.
Which brings us to our “nuclear option”: forwarding all your emails to a new Gmail account.
How to Forward Your Gmail Messages to a New Email Account
Before you begin the Gmail transfer process, we recommend that you back up your emails. To do this, download your emails to your computer or an external hard drive. You can delete the backup after the email transfer is complete to your new account if you wish, but it’s always a good idea to keep an extra copy locally.
To backup your Gmail messages, go to Google Takeout. Using our test Gmail account that contained about 75,000 messages, we got a download from Google Takeout in about 2 hours.
Once you have saved a copy of your emails, you are ready to start transferring them. Here are the steps to follow:
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Start by logging into your original Gmail account, clicking the “gear” icon in the top right and clicking See all settings.
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Select the POP/IMAP Transfer tab, then select the option Enable POP for all mail (POP stands for Post Office Protocol).
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You will have several options under When messages are accessible with POPTo automatically delete emails from your original account after transfer, select delete copy from gmail.
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Select Save changes.
Now it’s time to create your new account and transfer all your messages to it:
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If you haven’t already, create your brand new Gmail account without an inbox—we’ll call it your archive account.
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Log in to your new archive account, click the gear icon at the top and select See all settings.
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Select the Accounts and import tab at the top, then select Add an email account next to Check mail from other accounts.
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In the pop-up window, enter the name of your original Gmail account. Select Following.
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Select Import emails from my other account (POP3)Andselect Following Again.
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Enter your original Gmail account password. You may also need to create a password for the Google app (see note below).
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Select 995 under the port.
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Check these 3 boxes: Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail, Label incoming messages, Archive incoming messages (skip inbox)
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Select Add an account.
You will probably need to create a Google app password to forward Gmail messages
We tested this Gmail message transfer process twice, and both times the standard Gmail account password didn’t work. After some research, we determined that we needed to create a temporary “app password” to sync the accounts.
Google app passwords are 16-digit codes created for “less secure” apps or devices that allow access to your Google Account. They work just like your Google password.
If your regular Google password doesn’t work for syncing Gmail accounts, go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords to create an app password. Simply create a name for the password (we used “Bulk Forward Emails”) and then click the Create button. A pop-up window with your new 16-digit password will appear.
Once you have created the app password, go back to step 6 of the instructions above and use this new app password instead of your regular password.
Important: Google will only show you your app password once. Once you create it, you can’t ask to see it again, so be sure to write it down or otherwise save it after you create it.
Google’s Help Center states that “app passwords are not recommended and are unnecessary in most cases.” Once you’re done transferring your Gmail messages, we recommend removing your app password.
What happens after my Gmail accounts are synced?
Once you’ve successfully linked your new Gmail archive account to your original account, your emails should start transferring automatically. The process can take several hours or days, depending on how many emails you have.
In our test account with about 75,000 messages, we found that it took Gmail about 2 full days to transfer them all from the original account to the new archived email account.
Important:After you forward your Gmail messages to your archived email account, your original Gmail account will place all of those messages in the Trash folder, which you will need to empty manually. Emptying those 75,000 messages from the Trash took about an hour.
Before transferring Gmail messages, our test account was using just over 12GB, or 80% of Google’s free 15GB. After transferring, the account was using just 0.66GB, with 0.06GB coming from Gmail.
Which Gmail messages will not be forwarded?
We found that Gmail was forwarding all of our messages except for two categories: drafts and spam.
You’ll have to manually decide what to do with your drafts. Junk messages are automatically deleted every 30 days, so you can either let Gmail handle them or go to the Spam folder yourself after forwarding your mail and delete or forward those messages.
Once all your emails are imported to your new account, enjoy the Inbox Zero experience. You’ve breathed new life into your original account.
At this point, there are two final steps: you’ll want to stop the automatic transfer process so you can continue using your original account, and you’ll want to remove that app password if you had to create one.
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Log in to your new account, access your Settings and select See all settings.
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Select the Accounts and import tab, then select DELETE for your original account (under Check mail from other accounts.)
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When you are prompted to Confirm email account deletionselect ALL RIGHT.
If you had to create a password for the Google app and want to remove it now, go back to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and click the trash can icon next to the password you created.
Congratulations, you’re done!
Important note: Google will delete accounts that have been inactive for more than two years, so be careful not to completely ignore all your old emails after you forward them. If you don’t plan on using your archive account to send emails regularly, you can still keep the account active by logging in at least once every two years.