How to find 10MB, 20MB+ emails in Gmail and delete them

If your Gmail storage is filling up with years-old emails and bulky attachments, you don't have to scroll through your inbox looking for files one by one. Gmail's search bar supports commands that can narrow down emails by attachment size and age.USE THIS GMAIL SEARCH COMMAND

Press Enter, and Gmail will show matching emails based on those search conditions.

The has:attachment part looks for emails containing attachments, larger:10M filters for messages larger than 10 MB, and older_than:2y narrows the results to emails older than two years. Gmail officially supports these search operators and allows them to be combined.WANT TO FIND EVEN LARGER FILES?

You can change the size in the command depending on what you want to clean up.

This searches for emails with attachments larger than 20 MB. Gmail also supports the larger: operator for searching by message size.WANT TO FIND OLD EMAILS WITH ATTACHMENTS?

This can be useful for finding old documents, images and other files that you may no longer need. Google specifically recommends this search for finding emails with attachments older than two years.

Gmail allows you to narrow down attachment searches further. For example, you can look specifically for PDFs larger than 5 MB by entering:

This can help if your inbox contains a large number of documents, and you want to focus on a particular type of file.CHECK THE RESULTS BEFORE DELETING

Once Gmail displays the results, go through the emails before removing them. Some old attachments may still contain important documents, work files, photographs or information you may need later.

Select only the emails you no longer need and move them to the bin.EMPTY THE BIN TO FREE UP SPACE

Deleting an email does not immediately mean it is permanently removed. If you are trying to free up storage, go to the Bin after deleting unwanted messages and empty it.

Google notes that after deleting files and emptying the bin, storage can take some time to update.A SIMPLE WAY TO CLEAN UP YEARS OF EMAIL

You don't need to manually open hundreds of old emails to find the ones taking up space. Gmail's search operators let you combine conditions such as attachment presence, file size and age to narrow down the results.

A search like 'attachment larger:10M older_than:2y' can therefore be a useful starting point when you want to clean up an overloaded inbox.- EndsPublished By: Chaitanya DhawanPublished On: Sep 17, 2026 10:33 IST