How to free up space in your mailbox

This guide shows how to make room in a mailbox that is full or nearly full, so you can carry on sending and receiving.

Why space matters

Each email account has a quota, which is the most space it can use. When a mailbox reaches its quota, new mail is refused and senders get a bounce saying the mailbox is full. Everything counts towards the quota: the inbox, sent items, every folder you’ve made, and Trash and Junk too.

To see how much space an account is using, open Email Accounts in cPanel and look at the Storage column. You can raise the quota there if your hosting has room. See how to change an email password or mailbox size. If you’d rather not raise it, the steps below free up space instead.

Empty Trash and Junk

Deleted mail usually goes to Trash, and it still takes up space until Trash is emptied.

1. Log in to webmail. See how to log in to webmail.
2. In Roundcube, right-click the Trash folder (or click the three dots next to it, depending on the layout) and choose Empty.
3. Do the same for Junk or Spam, after a quick look to check nothing real ended up there.

If you use an email program, it may have its own setting to empty Trash on exit. Outlook and Thunderbird can also hold on to deleted messages until you Purge or Compact the folder.

Find the largest messages

A handful of big attachments often take up more room than thousands of ordinary emails.

1. In Roundcube, open the folder you want to check, such as the Inbox or Sent.
2. Open the list options. In the default Elastic look, click the Options icon above the message list (it may appear as List options).
3. Set Sorting column to Size and Sorting order to descending, then click Save.
4. The biggest messages now sit at the top. Delete the ones you don’t need.
5. Repeat for Sent, as the files you’ve sent are stored there too.

If you need to keep an attachment but not the email, open the message, download the attachment to your computer, then delete the message.

To see which folder is the largest, go to Settings, then Folders, and click a folder name. Roundcube shows its size and number of messages.

Archive old mail to your computer

You can keep old emails without keeping them on the server.

• Thunderbird. Messages in Local Folders are stored on your computer, not in the mailbox. Create a folder there, select old messages and drag them into it. Check they’ve copied, then delete them from the server folder.
• Outlook. Use File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export to export folders to a .pst file on your computer. Then delete the originals from the mailbox.
• Apple Mail. Create a mailbox under On My Mac and drag old messages into it.

Back up the archive file somewhere safe. Once mail is only on your computer, our backups no longer cover it. If you aren’t sure whether your program keeps mail on the server, see IMAP or POP3: which should you use.

Use Email Disk Usage in cPanel

cPanel has a tool for clearing out lots of mail at once.

1. Log in to cPanel. See how to log in to cPanel.
2. Open Email Disk Usage in the Email section.
3. Choose the email account from the list. cPanel shows each folder and how much space it uses.
4. Click Manage next to a folder.
5. Pick what to remove, for example messages older than a certain age or bigger than a certain size. The exact choices are shown on screen.
6. Click Delete Messages and confirm.

This can’t be undone from your end, so start with Trash, Junk or an old folder before touching the inbox. If you remove something by mistake, a recent copy may be in our backups. See how to restore a backup with JetBackup.

If it doesn’t work

• The usage figure hasn’t dropped. Usage can take a little while to update. Check again later, and make sure Trash was emptied after deleting.
• Space fills up again quickly. Look for a busy mailing list or an automatic report. An email filter can delete or file these for you. See how to create email filters in cPanel.
• Large messages won’t send. That is a size limit rather than a full mailbox. See email size limits explained.

Still stuck? Open a support ticket and we’ll help.