Three places in Google Workspace count against your storage limit: Drive, Gmail, and Photos.
Determine Current Usage
You can see how much total storage you are currently using across all three by going to https://drive.google.com/settings/storage. You can also go to Google Drive in a web browser and click on Storage at the bottom of the left-hand navigation. Note the list of files underneath is only in Drive.
Google Takeout
If you are an employee, we recommend against using Google Takeout to reduce storage usage in Drive and Gmail unless you only plan to move the data to ACU-owned storage. It is best practice not to store work data on your personal devices if you can avoid it, and there is some sensitive data you are explicitly not allowed to store on personal devices.
But Takeout is a great way to remove your personal photos from Photos. You can access Takeout at takeout.google.com and see Google's support article at https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190 for more information on how to use takeout.
Reduce Storage Usage in Gmail
The best way to reduce storage usage in Gmail is to do a custom search for emails larger than a particular size. A good size to start with is 20 MB.
- Go to your ACU email.
- In the search bar at the top, enter "before:xxxx larger:20mb " (with the year being last year).
- From here, you will see emails from over a year ago that are larger than 20 MB.
- Delete the ones you no longer need.
Reduce Storage Usage in Drive
Reducing the amount of space you use in Google Drive means deleting files. You want to prioritize the largest files since they take up the most space. Files you no longer need can simply be moved to the trash. Transferring to another storage option is a good way to keep files that you still need but that you don't use often.
Filter Storage by File Size
In Google Drive, there is currently only one way to filter files by size:
- Go to drive.google.com.
- On the left-hand side, click Storage.
- In the upper-right, make sure Storage used has a down-arrow next to it.
- This can be done by clicking on Storage used.
- From here, you can download files to other storage and move them to the trash.
- You can select multiple files at once by holding shift and click or ctrl+click for Windows and command+click for Mac.
Find Orphaned Files
First, we need to make sure we can actually see everything. Go to Google Drive and enter the following string into the search bar: "is:unorganized owner:me". The results of this search will be all files and folders that have become orphaned (their parent folder is missing, and you can't normally see them in Drive). You can sort them from here or move them all into a temporary folder where you can sort them more easily.
Reduce Storage Usage in Photos
Reducing storage usage in Photos is simply a matter of deleting photos that are stored in this space. If you are using the Google Photos app to back up photos from your phone, you can also change the upload size of the files you back up or stop the app from syncing:
- In the Photos mobile app, tap on your profile image at the top right.
- Select "Settings."
- Select "Back up & Sync."
- To stop the app from syncing, toggle off "Back up & sync."
- To change the upload size select "Upload Size" and select "Storage Save."
As a reminder, ACU Employees should limit the use of Google Workspace to business-related storage only. If you have personal photos in Google Photos, see the section above on Google Takeout for information on moving those photos to a personal account.
We also recommend that students utilize a personal account for backing up personal photos, as accounts are subject to removal after graduation per the Policy on Account Retention.