Outlook saying I need more storage.

Anonymous
2023-02-17T14:48:45+00:00

Hi there,

I've used a live.com account for years, and have always logged in through my browser to view emails. Today, the page loaded with a thin red notification at the top stating "From February 1, you'll need more storage to send or receive email."

Obviously, for a start, it's 16 days past February 1 which is weird, and my email is all working fine at the moment.

Clicking on "Manage Storage" opens a window, which states that my total used for my Microsoft Storage (things backed up from a laptop I hardly use, didn't even realise that they were being backed up to be honest) is 7.8GB out of a 5GB limit. I tried unsyncing my desktop on said laptop, but all it's done is remove everything from that laptop, which is pretty frustrating as I just wanted to leave the data on there and just free up some space on the Microsoft storage.

Anyway, I'm not overly bothered by that by now, as I'm more worried about my emails not working. Separate to the Microsoft storage, it lists my "Email Storage", which is 7.6GB out of 15GB. Does anyone know why I'm getting notified that I'm in danger of losing my email and pushed to buy a ridiculously expensive price plan?

Thanks in advance

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Account management, security, and privacy

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-03-19T13:53:52+00:00

    I don't use one drive because I don't trust the cloud, and have had the same email warning, but apparently no probs so far. I have had exactly the same experience with spam, which started a few weeks ago. Looks to me that outlook (hotmail) has a low level of competency.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-03-14T00:45:21+00:00

    Go to Onedrive, Setting, unlinked this PC.
    then Go the Outlook, Storage, One drive, Delete all, Empty recycle.

    And Done.

    Thanks

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-03-09T18:32:31+00:00

    Hello, I wouldn't worry about this since it seems to be "Cloud" related, not your computer. I deleted thousands of old emails and the notification just stays there.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-03-09T00:21:33+00:00

    I noticed my SENT box was full of 7,000 messages. I deleted that, it freed up space.

    Thank you! I never considered that the Sent folder would count in the limit. There were hundreds of photo attachments from years ago (both personal and work-related) buried there. All gone now, and problem resolved.

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  5. Ron-6928 4,991 Reputation points
    2023-03-08T15:45:46+00:00

    It may take some time for the background process to clean up and recalculate user mailboxes. It can take overnight. Check back the next day. If there's no change in the storage usage, something (on the server side) is faulty.

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