Whether you’re a digital hoarder or separating from a work or school account, you can archive your Google messages and media with this free and clever hack.
Anytime you create a new email account using Google, you get 15GB of storage, which is generous for coming with no price tag. But that 15GB can fill up quickly, especially because that chunk of data storage includes any videos and pictures you download to Google Drive and Google Photos. If your inbox is overflowing with unread newsletters and spammy emails that made it past your filter, you can take action to preserve all your important missives while starting afresh with a new inbox.
There is always the option of manually cleaning out your Gmail inbox or downloading a bunch of material to your local drive. What a pain though, right? And, chances are you’ll only eliminate so much junk before those gigabytes start stacking up again.
If you’re going through this process, you’re likely serious about retaining emails that could span years. So, as an added safety measure, it’s a good practice to back up your emails on your computer or an external hard drive before transferring them back into the cloud.
To do this, go to Google Takeout and select « Google Photos » and/or « Drive » as the products you wish to export, then follow the prompts. (Once you’ve completed the transfer, you can delete and free up your hard disk drive (HDD) for other uses.
