Finding Large Files to Delete

This option is available for all Workspace for Education editions.

Users can navigate to https://drive.google.com/settings/storage to see overall storage numbers in Drive, Gmail, and Photos. This narrows the focus to the service that needs the most immediate attention.

To remove large or unnecessary files in Drive and Shared Drives:

  1. Go to https://drive.google.com/drive/quota

    • This webpage can also be accessed through Drive Settings >  Manage Storage

 

  1. Sort by ‘Storage used’ column to view your largest files

  2. Delete files as needed

  3. Files count toward the overall storage limit of the account until they are removed from Trash in 30 days.

To expedite this process, navigate to ‘Trash’ on the left, right-click an individual file / folder and select Delete forever or select Empty trash in the upper right to purge all files / folders. Confirm by clicking Delete forever.

  1. If files have been copied to Shared Drives, scan through the contents of accessible Shared Drives and trash files as needed as this data may be consuming twice the storage space.

To begin removing data from gmail, consider the following options:

  1. Searching for large emails by typing ‘has:attachment larger:10M’ in the Search box, selecting the emails not needed from the results, and selecting the Delete icon

  2. Searching for emails before a specific date by typing ‘before:enter date’, selecting the emails not needed from the results, and selecting the Delete icon

  3. Remove all items from the Spam folder by clicking the checkbox for all messages and selecting Delete forever

  4. Emails will still count toward the overall storage limit of an account until they are removed from Trash in 30 days. To expedite this process, navigate to Trash on the left, select all messages in Trash, then select Empty Trash now.

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