My Mailbox is Full - Now What?

Most email messages don't take up lots of space. What does take a lot of space is images which can be in advertisements or as attachments in messages from friends and family. 

One first step would be to create folders for the email that you want to keep and to delete the ones you do not want to keep. When you delete mail it goes into the TRASH folder of your email. Mine is set to empty automatically every 30 days, so that keeps space from filling up. 

Since every email program is set up a little differently here are a few tips to help you set up folders.

• Look for the words "Manage Folders" 
• In Gmail folders are called Labels and in order to make a new one you have to open an email message first. At the top of the screen next to the word "more" is a picture of a Label.
•  When you click that it gives you an option of putting the message in a label already created or creating a new one. When you create a new one it shows up on the left side of the email page.
• To check how often your trash empties or if it empties automatically look for a GEAR and click on it. Somewhere in the list that comes up you will see "settings"
• Click on Settings and look for the trash settings. Change them to what you want them to be.

In Gmail folders are called Labels

This is a Gear. you can find Settings when you click the Gear.

One other thing you can do is to save email that you want to keep to your computer and delete it from your email. This is called Archiving your mail. In Gmail when you click to archive your mail you can find it again by searching or if you open All Mail. It is stored on the Google server and there is lots of space for it to go to.

In Outlook you can actually create a file to hold your archived mail. Right click on the "On My Computer" heading at the bottom of your folder list and choose New Folder. Name the folder Archived Mail or something like that. Now you can move messages into that folder or create a Rule that will automatically move messages to the archive after a certain time. 

Setting up a rule is also called filtering in Gmail. In some email setting up Rules is under the Tools menu. In others you will find the words "filter" or "rules" in the Settings. A rule is a sentence like  "When a new mail arrives"__________________ and then it gives you several choices for what to do with that message, like "move to archive folder" You also usually have to fill in a few more things like when it should be done (i.e. after 120 days) Once you have the rule created you usually have to click to enable it.

With Gmail archived messages can be found by clicking on All Mail. All Mail getspretty full, so you may have to search for the message that you archived using a word from the message or the email address of the sender. With Outlook you are moving your messages from the server to your own computer. You should be able to find the folder called Archive in your Documents folder.

If you have a lot of mail with photos that you want to keep it is better NOT to keep the photos in your email. When you get a picture in an email message you can right click on it and choose Save Image or Save Target. Your computer will open up a window and you can choose the Picture file for your photo to be saved in. Be sure to rename it because pictures are often named things like img566.jpg and you will not be able to tell by the name what it is later. 

Once you have saved all of the photos from your email, delete the messages and it will create more space.

Help I Have Two (or more) Accounts

I don't know about you, but I signed up for two Google accounts and then I used both of them at different times. It is confusing and I wanted to consolidate them into one account. I was able to do it, but it was a little complicated. In this post I will list the steps to use to consolidating Google Accounts.

1. Find out what is on the different accounts. 

• In the top corner when you are logged in you will see your information. 
• Click on the picture or your email address on the far right and choose MY ACCOUNT.

2.  A webpage opens up with all sorts of ways that you can work with your account. Choose Delete My Accounts or Services.

3. After you click again on Delete my Account this will give you a list of what is on your account. You will have to spend some time looking and thinking about what is on your different accounts, what you want to save, what you want to move to the combined account and what doesn't matter. It is a little scary to click on Delete My Account for the second time, but it really just gives you information. You are not deleteing your account yet. 



4. Once you have decided which account to keep and which to delete you will have to deal with all of the content that is in the account that you are going to delete. Some of the information will transfer to your other account, but some of it will have to be downloaded to your computer and then uploaded to the other account.

Google is clear about the fact that the data in your account belongs to you and you have the right to download that data. Here are some examples of ways I could deal with the data from my account. 

• Blogger - I would need to download my blog and then recreate it with the address I want to use and upload it again.
• Drive - I would share all of the documents and folders in my Drive account with the email address of the other account. Then when they are deleted in one place I will have them in the other.
• Gmail - I would probably download my mail and have an archive on my computer rather than uploading it again to my other address. I could forward any mail that I want to be sure is in my other account.
• Photos - I would need to download my photos from this account and add them to the other account.
• YouTube - I would need to download any videos and upload them to my other account.
• Calendar - Most likely I would just let this be deleted because I would be using the calendar on the other account. I suppose any appointments I need to show on my current calendar could just be added.
• Chrome Sync - I wouldn't worry about this because it is just my bookmarks.
• Contacts - I would need to export my contacts from one account and then import them into my other account.

There are a few other services that Google owns, so you will have to take each one individually and decide what you want to do with it. 

After looking at all of that you may think that it is not worth all of the work to combine the accounts. You can just leave them both up there and use only one of them from now on in order to make it less confusing. One will have current info and the other will be an archive. 

If you decide to do the transfer there are two choices once you have emptied out one of the accounts. You can DEACTIVATE or DELETE the account. When you delete an account you can NEVER use that username again. It is gone. When you deactivate the account the account and the information that is left in it is kept in an archive and if you ever want to use that account again you can activate it. 

If you are wanting to do this, but need a little comfort and a little walking through call (512)560-2609 or email me (helpimnotageek@gmail.com). I can connect with your computer. It does not matter where you are I can help you out :-)