storage is full

To resolve the issue of your Hotmail account indicating that your storage is full, you can follow these steps:

1. Check Your Storage Quota: Verify the current storage usage of your mailbox. You can do this by using the following PowerShell cmdlet if you have access:

      Get-MailboxStatistics -Identity <YourEmailAddress> | FL displayname,totalitemsize
   

2. Delete Unnecessary Emails: If your storage is indeed full, consider deleting old or unnecessary emails, especially those with large attachments. This can help free up space in your mailbox.
3. Empty the Deleted Items Folder: Make sure to empty your Deleted Items folder, as emails in this folder still count against your storage quota.
4. Archive Emails: If you have an archive feature enabled, you can move older emails to your archive to free up space in your main mailbox. You can check if archiving is enabled using:

      Get-Mailbox <YourEmailAddress> | fl ArchiveStat*
   

5. Manage Attachments: If you have many emails with attachments, consider saving those attachments to your iCloud or another storage solution and then deleting the emails.

By following these steps, you should be able to manage your storage without needing to purchase additional space.

Dear Alexander Law,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum. We understand the frustration of not being able to send or receive emails due to a full storage quota, and we'll help you resolve this. 

We notice that Q&A Assist has provided some steps. Please ignore the PowerShell commands it mentions (Get-MailboxStatistics, Get-Mailbox). Those are for business accounts and do not apply to your personal Outlook.com/Hotmail account. 

For personal Microsoft accounts, your storage is shared across Outlook.com mail, OneDrive files, and Microsoft 365 apps. The "Your cloud storage is full" message refers to this total combined storage. 

Here are the steps to free up space without purchasing more: 

1. Identify What's Using Your Space: 

• Go to your Microsoft Account Storage page and sign in at https://account.microsoft.com/services 
• This dashboard will show you a breakdown of how your 5 GB of free storage is used between Mail and OneDrive. 

2. Free Up Space in Outlook.com (Mail): 

• Sort by Size: In your Outlook.com inbox, use the "Filter" option to sort emails by "Size" (largest first). This helps you quickly find emails with large attachments. 
• Clean Focused Inbox: Review your "Focused" and "Other" tabs, deleting unnecessary emails. 
• Empty Folders: Permanently delete emails from the "Deleted Items" and "Junk Email" folders. Items in these folders still count against your quota. 

3. Free Up Space in OneDrive: 

• From the storage page, click on "OneDrive" to view your largest files. 
• Since you have ample iCloud storage, you can download and then delete large files (like videos, archives, or old backups) from OneDrive to your Mac, freeing up your Microsoft storage for email. 

4. Manage Attachments (Long-term): 

• For future emails with large attachments, consider saving the attachments directly to your iCloud Drive or Mac and then deleting the email from Outlook.com. 

By focusing on large items in your Mail and OneDrive via the storage dashboard, you should be able to free up enough space to restore email functionality. 

Reference: For more details on how Microsoft cloud storage works, you can review: What is Microsoft cloud storage? 

Please try these steps and let us know if you are able to regain access to your inbox. 

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".  

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