Outlook.com storage full? Here's why, and how to fix it right now!

Chapters
0:25 Storage is now shared
1:05 A ploy to purchase more storage?
1:45 Managing storage
2:30 Attachments count
4:00 Instant failure scenario
4:50 Deleting the attachments
5:20 Delete the whole email
5:55 OneDrive? What?
7:15 Can't send or receive messages
7:41 What should you do?

More Ask Leo!

[askleonotenboom]

Microsoft has changed how they allocate your storage.

[nelliemelba]

Thank you for explaining so clearly. Just yesterday, without warning I couldn't receive or send emails. I was told a couple of months ago that I was reaching my limit, and I did a massive housekeeping exercise, and deleted tons of stuff. I thought I'd done enough, but after watching this guess I need to do a bit more work...and probably switch to a different email.

[SM-kuuo]

I’m going to abandon my Hotmail all together

[musicvallee]

Hi Leo, Thanks for your video on Outlook storage. I had that problem. They told me I had 14 GB of storage used, way over my limit. I deleted my emails down to a skeleton number. No change. Then I tried to go into One Drive and delete items there. Still no change. Then I thought about those folders to the left of the mail which I hadn't used in years. Found 100 emails in one file and 90 in another. Deleted both of them plus a few others. My storage went down about a half a GB.
I kept looking... then I found the mother load!! Over 7500 emails in my sent file. Deleted every one.
That made my storage go well below the 5 GB. Never dreamed I had to keep a watch on my sent file. Probably didn't have to til they changed their way of doing things. I can now use my email, though after this experience I may change to another company. Wanted to pass this along to you and your watchers. Hope it helps!

[kartilabush]

Thank you for explaining this, been having the same email for over 20 years, and It has done this before, I saved attachment and deleted thousands of old emails, but now recently, everything had happen that you explained, I spent hours deleting emails, and it still don't work, I had no clue about yhe one drive, So thank you

[ronaldwolfe]

This is the third video of yours that I have seen. I subscribed after viewing the first one. You do not disappoint. Thank you for the clear exposition. So, I have deleted many files in Onedrive, and have turned off automatic backing up of my files (which as you have inferred, I did not know was happening. So now I hope I can download attachments in Outlook to my desktop and store them on my new external drive - 1Terrabyte, $60 - FOREVER. Wish me luck.

[DH-uqzw]

It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t suddenly spring it on you. My hotmail account was downgraded from 15gb to 10gb yesterday without any warning. I was expecting an important email that may have been rejected. I have a flight to catch today but have had to wasted many hours deleting emails so that I can receive them again. Can we get together and sue Microsoft as a class action?

[bigmeany]

Outlook and Onedrive are garbage, it is beyond me why people use anything from Microsoft products but this is a good reason why you shouldn’t.

[bonniecriscione-brown]

Thank you so much. I thought I was going crazy.

[bruciethecuz]

Thankyou Leo! This clarification is much appreciated. I have since opened another Gmail account to take on the heavier emails which I normally receive attachments with. Good on you for this great explanation! 👍

[catsailor]

Brand New HP Laptop and all of a sudden, boom(!!), my email was full. Spent hours trying to find out how to transfer emails plus attachments to an external hard drive. Still don't have an answer for that! But, Leo's video is quite timely and does explain what most of us have come to suspect about this MS tactic - which sucks!!!

[mikerobins]

Many thanks for doing this video. Several friends have been 'hit' by this Microsoft change and your explanation is very helpful to me and them. I also agree with not encouraging Microsoft with what is fairly clearly an attempt to force users into a purchaing a subscription.

[creativity]

Great video. Time to move on to gmail. Found many old emails that brought some memories but now deleted 😢

[lianatheghost]

thank you for making this video, I'm so confused by this whole situation.

[iconforuc]

Leo. I hope your next vid will cover this but what's puzzling is two things: I have always had OneDrive removed completely from my computer, so why does it appear to be saving on OneDrive as it's been deleted. 2nd: I removed OneDrive (and all cloud based storage for that matter) as I don't want ANY company storing/saving MY content regardless of what it is but now I don't have options to change the storage location of attachments back to "my computer". I'm also not seeing the similar options you had in this video such as "Manage my Storage" at the bottom. I have to go into settings. However, in setting there is no way to change where my attachments can be selected to store back to my computer. Will your upcoming video cover this? I use MS2007. Thanks for all the help you provided it's gotten me through several issues in the past. Cheers.

[Statinstories]

Go Microsft!--as an 80 year old person with a neuromuscular disease and using my Hotmail to communicate with physicians, I'm disgusted. And I have a "Premium" Hotmail account, whatever that is (I've unsuccessfully questioned what that means for years, as I've paid $20? 50? or whatever the annual fee for years now).

[YitzYBerlin]

Can one set up an email app to reach in with imap, and then move selected emails to folders ouside of the outlookcom folder structure?

[DharnidharVemuri]

It should prompt you to save all the emails (along with attachments) in PST by default instead of asking to increase storage on OneDrive.

[AbbeRustMojo]

I was unaware of this update and lost a job opportunity because of it. They apparently sent me 2 emails but they did not reach me

[Jose_Hunters_EWF_Remixes]

Thank you very indeed, Leo!
I never wanted onedrive to automatically save everything to itself "while pretending the files were contained in my user folder"
I am now able to use my extremely important hotmail account where I have done all my business interactions for over a decade