How to Check Your Yahoo! Mail Quota

by Heinz Tschabitscher
An independent writer who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated October 15, 2018

Yahoo! Mail includes 1 TB (a terabyte, around 200 high-definition movies) of online storage for your emails (including the attachments, say pictures, in them).

Filling all this space with mail is hard work that takes many a year—and it is entirely possible, especially if some messages are large and rich in attached files (high-definition movies?).

If you fear you may have used a substantial amount of your Yahoo! Mail storage quota and risk running into a limit that will prevent you from sending and receiving further emails, you can check the status of your Yahoo! Mail account's online disc space easily.

Check Your Yahoo! Mail Quota

To find out how much of your quota for storing mail online in Yahoo! Mail you are using:

  1. Make sure you are using the full version of Yahoo! Mail.

    Checking your quota is, alas, not supported in Yahoo! Mail Basic.

    To switch, follow the Switch to the newest Yahoo Mail link in Yahoo! Mail Basic.

  2. Click the settings gear icon (⚙) in Yahoo! Mail.

  3. Select Settings from the menu that has appeared.

  4. Find your total storage quote and the percentage used for messages currently in your account at the left column's bottom.

  5. Click Cancel.

What to Do if You Are Near the Yahoo! Mail Storage Limit and Risk Running Out of Space

If you find you are nearing the upper limit of your storage quota for emails in Yahoo! Mail, you can do a number of things to reduce the account size:

  1. Empty the Trash and Spam folders.

    Click the trash can icons next to these folders.

  2. Archive old or large mail to

    a computer's local storage or

  3. another Yahoo! Mail (or other free email) account. (See below.)

To identify big messages in your Yahoo! Mail account, you can:

  1. Search for messages that contain attachments in Yahoo! Mail on the web.

    Enter "has:attachment" in the Search field in Yahoo! Mail.

    Make sure All mail is selected for Search in (in front of the search field).

    Click Search Mail.

  2. Set up Yahoo! Mail using IMAP in an email program and sort messages by size in it.

To archive mail from a Yahoo! Mail account to local computer storage or another email account:

  1. Set up the account from which you want to archive using IMAP in an email program that supports multiple IMAP accounts.

  2. You have two options for archiving your email:

    For archiving to another email account: Make sure that account—be it Yahoo! Mail, iCloud Mail, Gmail or AOL Mail, for instance—is also set up in the same email program using IMAP.

    For archiving locally to the computer:​ Create local folders in the email program that will hold the archived messages.

  3. Move all messages you want to archive from the source to the destination account (if you wish to use a separate IMAP account) or local folders (if you want to archive on the computer).