Running out of Google space

If you're maxing out your Google Drive quota (30GB at the time of this writing -- June 2014), here are some tips for how to approach the problem.

Open Drive. Mouse over the pale grey text in the lower left corner and a window should appear. It will show you what portion of your overall storage space is being consumed by which part of Google.

Screenshot to clarify:

If the space hog is your email, then you can start by looking for emails that have gigantic attachments (sent to your or from you or both). Search in your Gmail search box for the phrase

has:attachment larger:10m

Just like that, with the colons and space -- this will turn up emails with attachments larger than 10 megabytes. Another screenshot:

If the space hog is Drive, then sorting your files by ‘Quota used’ allows you to find large files and take care of them if you are near your storage limit.

1. Within Google Drive, click on the ‘Sort’ drop-down icon.

2. Select the ‘Quota Used’ option.

3. Your files will be sorted from largest to smallest.

* Note only files you have synced or uploaded count towards your storage limit (any file that isn’t converted to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides will take up storage space).