How to clear up space on outlook.com and fix "Your Mailbox is full" prompt

HOW TO CLEAR UP SPACE ON OUTLOOK AND FIX THE “YOUR MAILBOX IS FULL” PROMPT

Last Updated on August 11, 2023 by Anjum

It is easy to send / receive emails with attachments of large sizes as long as you have free storage space in your email account.

But, unfortunately the storage space in the free accounts made on outlook.com or on any other free email accounts like Gmail or Yahoo etc. are limited.

AMPLE STORAGE SPACE WHEN YOU CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT

Initially when you are creating the account on outlook.com you will feel that the amount of storage space allotted to you with your free account is ample and enough for you but that changes when you get to use the account for several years and send or receive large attachments regularly. This could eat up your storage space and before you know it you will get the prompt “Your Mailbox is 90% full / Your Mailbox is full” when you login to your account.

Need More Space? Your mailbox is 90% full — **Your mailbox is 90% full!** **Don’t just go premium yet! Read the suggestions here and you might not need to go premium!**

You get 49.50 Gb of storage space on any email account created through Outlook.com be it @hotmail.com or @live.com or @outlook.com email id.

UNABLE TO SEND OR RECEIVE EMAIL WHEN MAILBOX STORAGE IS FULL

The prompt starts appearing when your storage space reaches 90% of the capacity. Once it reaches 90%, whenever you will login to your account through a browser like Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox etc. you will get to see the prompt at the bottom of your screen. At this time you will still be able to send or receive emails.

Unfortunately, the situation gets worse if you get the prompt that your mailbox is completely full then you will not be able to send or receive any new email on your account. To regain control of your email account you will need to clear up space in your account. Fortunately there are various ways you can do that.

UPDATE: Recently a lot of people have started getting storage error on outlook.com. When they go to their inbox they see a message like this at the top: “From February 1, you’ll need storage to send or receive email. Manage Storage Get More Storage”. This article might help you with that if you are able to clear up ample space in your mailbox.

HOW TO CLEAR UP SPACE ON OUTLOOK AND FIX “YOUR MAILBOX IS FULL” PROMPT IN BROWSER

People when using the desktop, will usually check their emails through either the Outlook app or through the outlook.com website. In this post we will be discussing the ways in which you can clear up storage space on outlook website and fix “your mailbox is full” prompt, be it your hotmail, live or outlook id.

There are several ways to fix the “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt on outlook.com email account when browsing through the outlook.com website.

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Also Read: How To Fix The Email Attachments Not Opening Problem On Outlook.com

1- EMPTY FOLDERS TO CLEAR UP SPACE ON OUTLOOK AND FIX ‘YOUR MAILBOX IS FULL’ PROMPT

It is very easy if you want to just delete everything folder wise from your email account. There are several folders like Inbox, Sent or Junk Email inbuilt when you create an account. If you are sure you don’t need anything from each of these folders then you can delete them respectively. Here’s how you can do it:

WORD OF CAUTION: Following this method will permanently delete the emails from the folders that you will empty.

If you are getting the “Mailbox is Full” prompt then click on “Fix this in Storage Settings” next to ‘Your Mailbox is full’ prompt at the bottom left of your screen or click “View Storage” at the bottom of your screen next to the prompt.

“Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **“Your Mailbox is 90% full. Once your mailbox is full, you…” prompt at the bottom of the screen**

Note: If you are unable to see any of the prompts then click on the Settings Icon on the top right of your Screen and then clicking “View All Outlook Settings”. In the pop-up window click on General and then on Storage to see the storage settings.

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A pop-up window will open showing the storage settings. You can see which Folder is taking up how much of your storage space. You can delete the contents of the folders individually by clicking on “Empty” next to the folder and selecting the time frame which you want to delete.

Storage Settings - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Storage Settings**

There are 4 option in there. Select the one that you want to choose to delete them accordingly:
- All
- 3 Months and Older
- 6 Months and Older
- 12 Months and Older

Options under Empty - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **4 Options under the ‘Empty’ drop down menu**

You can delete each folder’s contents separately. Once you are done you will see that the storage summary has changed in the top. If the overall storage size is now less than 90% then the prompt will not come other wise it will keep on showing.

This is one method to clear up space on outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt on Outlook.com email account. This method is easy to perform.

The only downside of using this method is that you it will delete all the emails from the time frame that you have chosen. Lets suppose you have some important emails that fall in the time frame that you have selected then they will also be deleted. The effectiveness of this method then becomes less.

Fortunately there are other methods that you can use to get rid of the “Your Mailbox is Full” Prompt on outlook.com email account.

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2- CLEAR UP MAILBOX BY ATTACHMENT SIZE

Over time in our mailbox there is a lot of clutter. We send and receive so many emails, some of them important whereas others might not be of very high importance. In order to keep the important emails and delete the not so important ones, you cannot just delete the whole folder. You will be needing an elaborate method to deal with this. You can’t just check each and every mail before deleting. This will be tedious.

Fortunately there are ways you can do this. One of the ways is to sort your mailbox by attachment size and delete the unimportant emails that are taking up the most amount of storage space. This is how to do it:

Click on Filter on the top right of your screen.

Go to Filter - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Go to Filter on the top right side of the screen**

A bunch of options will open up. Click on Sort.

Click on Filter and then Sort - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Click on Filter and then hover over Sort**

Then click on ‘Size’ in Sort by and at the same pop-up window click on ‘Largest on Top’ in the Sort Order.

Sort by Size and then Largest on top in Sort order - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Sort by Size and then Largest on top in Sort order**

All the emails will be sorted automatically now and the ones taking up the most space will be at the top.

Select the emails that you want to delete by putting a check in the selection box next to the email itself. You can select as many emails here as you want to.

Once you have selected the emails you no longer require, press ‘Delete’ at the top of the screen.

All the selected emails will be deleted but not completely gone. They will still be in your Deleted Items Folder. In order to permanently delete them and clear up the storage space, go to the Deleted Items Folder and Click on ‘Empty Folder’. All the emails in the Deleted Items Folder will now be permanently deleted.

Select Deleted Folder under the Folders option on the left of your screen — **Select “Deleted Items” under the Folders option on the left of your screen**

Empty the Deleted Items Folder - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Empty the Deleted Items Folder by clicking on ‘Empty folder’ at the top of your screen**

After deleting the unimportant emails taking up the most storage space you can check from the storage settings if deleting has emptied the storage space. If yes then fine but if not then delete some more emails to clear up space.

This method lets you delete the emails by attachment size wise. There is another method that you can use which will let you delete the messages from a specific sender or containing a specific keyword in the subject.

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3- DELETE EMAIL MESSAGES WITH INBOX RULES

Another popular feature that you can use to clear up storage space in your outlook account and fix “your mailbox is full” prompt is to use the Inbox Rules feature. This feature has a lot more to offer then just delete a bunch of emails but if you are looking to clear up space in your mailbox then Inbox Rules feature can be used.

Basically in Inbox Rules, you can create a rule where you can sort out the mails by Sender or by Keywords in Subject etc. It is a very useful tool to organize your mailbox. Here’s how you can use the Inbox rules to your benefit in clearing up storage space on your Mailbox on outlook.com.

Go to Settings by clicking on the Settings Icon at the top right of the screen.

Click on the Settings Icon at the top right of your screen

When the pop-up window appears click on “View all Outlook Settings”.

You will see the Settings window now. Here in the “Mail” tab, click on Rules and then click on Add a New Rule.

Add an inbox rule - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Add a rule that will automatically sort your mailbox for you**

Give this rule a Name.

Next, Add a condition. Condition could include anything that is mentioned in the drop down options. For example you can add a condition that whichever mail is received from Sender XYZ will be selected. You can even add a condition based on the keywords in subject. You can add more than one condition. If there is more then one condition then all the conditions have to be met in order for the rule to run.

Add a Condition options - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Lots of options to choose from in the drop down menu of add a condition. You can add multiple conditions in one rule.**

Once your condition is made, the next thing to do is to choose an action. Here you will tell the mailbox what to do once the condition is met. For example, if the mail is coming from Sender XYZ then Delete that mail or Move it to a certain Folder. Similar to adding a condition, you can add multiple actions in one rule.

Add an action options in inbox rules — **Options under Add an action. You can add multiple actions one by one for one rule.**

Click on Run Rule Now and then Save to start processing.

Click on Run Rule Now - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Click on Run rule now**

Inbox Rules are applied for all the mails already received and for any future email as soon as it is received.

Using the Rules you can clear up a lot of mailbox storage space as you can delete the mails that are of no importance to you. For example, you can create a rule to delete any email that contains the word “Facebook” in it as usually these are just notification emails.

There is another method that can be used to clear up the storage space on outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt and that is discussed next.

4- GET RID OF THE “YOUR MAILBOX IS FULL” PROMPT BY USING SWEEP

Sweep feature is a relatively new feature and is very handy in sorting out the emails Sender wise. This feature can be used on outlook.com to clear up space in your Mailbox if it is full. Here’s how you can use it:

Go to any email from a sender whose emails you want to delete.

Once that email opens, you will see a bunch of options at the top of your screen.

Select Sweep from the options.

Options at the top when you open the email — **You will see a bunch of options when you open the email at the top of the screen**

You will see a new pop-up-window that will ask you what do you want to do with emails from this sender. There are 4 options available:
1. Move all messages from the Inbox folder
2. Move all messages from the Inbox folder and any future messages
3. Always keep the latest message and move the rest from the Inbox folder
4. Always move messages older then 10 days from the Inbox folder

Sweep Options - clear up space on Outlook and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt — **Sweep Options**

Next, Select what you want to do with the selected messages. Choose an action that you want to perform. For example you can choose to Delete the emails who met with your selected option above.

Click on “OK” to proceed with the Sweep.

You will see that all the messages that fall under the Sweep category will be moved to the folder you have selected. If you have chosen to Delete them then you will have to permanently delete them by emptying the Deleted Folder.

CONCLUSION

There are four methods with step by step instructions discussed here. You can choose whichever is more feasible to you. Each one is easy and will serve your purpose in order to clear up space on your outlook account and fix “Your Mailbox is Full” prompt. Make sure not to delete any important email and regret later. Each method is easy to follow and will create ample amount of storage space to make you work with ease.

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*Disclaimer: The methods discussed in this article are what I have personally used. Infinityfolder.com or any one at Infinity Folder is not responsible in case of any problem or data loss due to these methods. Please check and select the email messages carefully before deleting them.

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