She sometimes (infrequently) takes pix of important documents & emails them to herself. And saves important communications in email.

Also, do you know if there is a way to turn on a feature that shows how much space each email takes up? She said her gmail does not show this.

Thank you!

...but there's a visible, running total of space used by the account.

Click on the account profile picture (upper right hand corner of the gmail page). Click on 'Manage your Google account'. That will open another page with various account settings. In the 'Account storage' area, it tell how much space the account is using, in total.

Every morning I scan down my inbox and delete everything that is more than 1 week old.

If there's some content I really must keep, I'll copy/paste it into a text file (or image file as the case may be) and save it to disk. Then delete the email.

Thank might work going forward, but she needs to know what counts towards space used, if you know? I don't know.

I do the same thing. Easy peasy into a text file and then it's also backed up to my back up drive and the cloud. OCD, I know
Hey, she could use the cloud for back up also. It would be retrievable on her phone if she needed it "out in the field".. A thought.
m

I don't use it. 😊

Best to get a smart guy "who has his head in the clouds" to help her. My computer "kung fu" is not that great.
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So the answer is 'delete the crap first'.
gmail has sorting filters that can help find all the junkmail.

She said she had 71K emails in promotional (ads!), deleted them & that only freed up .03 space, even after deleting & dumping trash.

These were from stores & filled with pictures. Should have been more, I would think.

First is spend the 20 bucks a year to get 100 GB with Google one. That relieves the pressure for now. Or, she may not even have to do that.

Then, go through things and delete them. Ruthlessly. Or don't, since you now have 84 more GB to play with.

Note that pictures, Google Docs, and even deleted emails count toward storage space. When you sign into Google's home page there's a neat gadget that helps you decide what to delete to free up storage. She may find she doesn't need the 100 GB after all.

After all that, there are plenty of other places to store stuff. She might want to move all the pictures to Flickr. General docs or files to Dropbox. Open a couple of other email accounts. Yahoo and Hotmail (or whatever MS is calling it now) give you loads of storage. There's even Evergreen, which does other cool stuff.

Yes, Google makes it all so easy, but there is always a price for easy.

After the fresh hell that is going through 16 gigs of stuff (probably mostly junk, as most of our storage is) she will likely find herself far more organized-- and with luck it will still all be free.

Me, I love the amount of space in yahoo mail, and have synched everything through Dropbox and Hotmail. Google insists on uploading phone pix, using up my 16 gig, but I delete them after uploading to Flickr.

As an aside, I keep seeing on photography forums the need to store 15,000, 20,000, or more images. Unless you have a specific business where you have to keep them, I cannot imagine anyone having that many thousands of good shots. Back in the film days we were more careful with framing and exposure, but now when I set everything on auto and press the shutter button, I end up throwing away at least 90% of the shots. I suppose some people don't.

on edit-- oops, that's Evernote, evergreen's a tree.

Sorry, I have no idea.

Does this happen if emailed or texted?

Something doesn't seem right. She said she deleted 71K ads - grocery store ads & such - filled with pictures, but even after deleting & dumping trash, that only freed up .02 of storage.

Does this seem right to you?

She is not willfully storing anything on the google cloud.

a favor, but some favors I'm not sure I want.

71,000 ads? The pictures in most ads now aren't embedded in the email. Just a link that gets opened if you open the email. Kinda like the way pix are displayed here on DU. Saves a lot of bandwidth that way.

Didn't you say she emails herself stuff? That could mean some of the stuff is duplicated in the storage.

Go through the steps here https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9776477 and see if it helps. Good general information there, too. And you don't have to upgrade to read it.