Information Technology Services

The best way to reduce email storage is to individually review and delete unnecessary emails. Increase your efficiency by taking the following steps:

• Search for large attachments.Removing large attachments from your email can reduce the amount of storage in your Gmail account. (Find Emails with Large Attachments PDF)
• Search email for outdated information. You can search your Gmail account by keywords, date, sender, size and other search terms. For instance, if you have completed a project and wish to delete the emails related to the project, you can search by the project name. (Searching Emails PDF)
• Delete by label. Use Gmail's filter feature to create a filter or label and then delete the items within the label with minimal clicks or searching. (Creating Email Filters PDF, Deleting Emails Using Labels PDF, Deleting Emails Using Labels Video)
• Review your sent folder. Gmail sent folders will sometimes retain copies of emails of emails you have already deleted. You cannot mass delete emails from your sent folder. You can only delete emails on a page by page basis. For example, if your email shows 50 emails a page, you will only be able to check a box to delete 50 emails at a time. We strongly recommend you review your sent folder, as many emails are being stored there.
• Unsubscribe to mailing lists and newsletters. If you are no longer participating in mailing lists or reading newsletters, unsubscribing will decrease the amount of emails you receive and therefore need to delete.
• Regularly empty your trash and spam folders. Set aside time once a week to review your spam emails and delete them. Empty your trash once a week to reduce the amount of storage in your account.

Reviewing your email takes time. We recommend you take an hour a day to review older email throughout this process.

Your Google Drive storage is used for files you’ve uploaded, like PDFs, images, and videos, as well as documents you’ve created with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other Google apps. To free up space, you should identify and delete the largest files you no longer need.

• Sort by size. You can sort your Google Drive files by size. Access your Google drive storage page (drive.storage.com/storage/quota) to see all your files sorted from largest to smallest; this is the most efficient way to find what's using the most space.
• Move files to Shared Drives. Google Shared Drives are not "owned" by an individual user and the files in Shared Drives do not count towards individual storage limits. You can read more about Shared Drives.
• Empty the trash folder. Deleted files remain in your trash bin until you have permanently removed them by emptying the trash.

The staff storage limit of 50GB will apply to you - principal investigators and researchers without faculty appointments are considered staff members.

All students will have the same storage limits (25GB). If you are a graduate student working on research projects with faculty, we recommend working with your faculty advisor to move research materials to a Brandeis Google Shared Drive.

Postdoctoral candidates are considered staff members and therefore will fall under the staff storage limits, which is 50GB.

Research and work materials can be moved to Brandeis Google Shared Drives and/or Box, both of which will remain unlimited on Jan. 13, 2026. If you are concerned about preserving older data, consult with the University archivist (archives@brandeis.edu) to see if your materials are eligible for the University archive.

Individual exceptions will not be granted at this time. For questions or concerns related to this policy, please reach out to storagepolicy@brandeis.edu.

Length of employment does not affect your storage limit.

No, policy requires Brandeis data to be stored on Brandeis services.

Personal files should be moved to your personal accounts or devices.

Please review the University’s Records Retention Policy to ensure you are complying with all legal obligations in regards to records management. For example, files on a legal hold from the General Counsel’s Office cannot be deleted, destroyed or moved. You can consult with University Records Management if you are uncertain about the retention policy. 

You can also ask your supervisor, supervising faculty member, or The Human Research Protection Program for more information on record retention policies. 

You will see a notification that you are over your storage limit, and limitations on your account will be determined by Google policy. You could lose the ability to share and edit files in Google Drive - we recommend you clean up your storage before limits go into effect.

ITS has a list of all faculty, staff, affiliates, and students who are over their assigned limit and will be reaching out via email to those individuals. You can check and manage your storage utilization before you receive any notifications.

It may take up to 24 hours after you make changes for your storage amount to update. Ensure you have emptied your email and Drive trash folders as well.

We do not have technical support for exporting email to a searchable archive.

Service accounts and shared mailboxes are exempt from storage limits at this time.

The University Archives collects records, including digital files, that document university policy, strategic planning, curriculum, research, organizational structure, programming, campus life and culture, and the built environment. Types of records that might belong in the archives include reports, publications, presentations, meeting minutes, memoranda, correspondence, photographs and audiovisual materials, and ephemera (pamphlets, posters, etc.). If you have files that fit this description, please contact the University Archives.