About storage | Storage quotas | Storage FAQs
What is Microsoft cloud storage and what is my quota?
- Your Microsoft storage includes OneDrive files and photos, Outlook.com pictures and attachments, and other files you store when using Microsoft apps and services with a personal account.
- Your Microsoft personal account or a Microsoft 365 subscription sets your storage quota.
How to check how much storage you have used
Sign in by using the following link to check your account and see your storage usage and quota.
Tip
- After you sign in, select the
Microsoft storage section to show details. - If your cloud storage is full, to prevent your account from becoming over quota, you need to either reduce the number of files you have stored (see below) or renew/buy more storage.
- If your Microsoft 365 subscription expired, you need to renew it to get the same amount of storage again.
How to buy more storage
To renew or upgrade your Microsoft 365 subscription, select Buy now:
Tip
If you're already a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium, or Pro subscriber, you can extend your storage up to 10 TB. Only the subscription account holder can extend their storage.
How to clear your Microsoft cloud storage
To learn how to reduce your storage, follow the steps in the next section.
How to free up OneDrive storage space
Sign in to OneDrive and see what's taking up space.
Tip
- Look for large files, ZIP files, or other archives that you no longer need.
- Your recycle bin also contributes to your cloud storage usage.
- Move unwanted files out of OneDrive. See the following section for good storage housekeeping tips.
Go to your OneDrive Recycle bin and select
Empty recycle bin.Important
- Emptying your computer's Recycle bin or Trash is not the same as emptying your OneDrive Recycle bin. You need to empty your OneDrive Recycle bin online.
- After you delete unwanted files, it might take up to 24 hours for quotas to update.
- If you removed as much as you can and you're still over the quota, you need to buy more storage.
Review your usage. Check that your OneDrive camera roll isn't full of unwanted videos, screenshots, or images saved from social media.
How to reduce Outlook storage
Sign in to Outlook.com and go to Settings > Account > Storage.
Select Email storage to expand the section. You see a breakdown of how much space each folder in your mailbox uses. The list of folders includes an option to permanently delete all items (or those older than 3, 6, or 12 months) in these folders to free up space.
Note
If you're not a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you can also upgrade to get 100 GB of space as well as other premium Outlook and Office features.
Review large emails in each account folder. Check largest emails with attachments and review each folder sorted by size.
Tip
Emails sent with large attachments use more cloud storage. You need to delete the email to delete the attachment.
Review your sent items and sort them by size. Don't forget to check your other folders too.
Empty your Junk Email and select
Empty Folder.Permanently delete email by selecting or highlighting the messages, then press Shift and DEL on your keyboard.
Tip
- The Deleted Items folder counts against your mailbox storage quota until you manually empty it, or the emails are automatically deleted after 30 days, whichever happens first.
- When you delete items from Inbox or other folders, you send the items to the Deleted Items folder by default.
- The Junk folder items are automatically deleted after 30 days.
Delete email messages that include files or photos. To delete the file or image, you must delete the message it's attached to:
- For All images, find the corresponding message in your mailbox and delete it.
- For Sent images, go to your Outlook.com Sent Items, find the corresponding message, and then delete it.
- After deleting the message, you also need to delete it from your Deleted Items folder. Go to Deleted Items, select the item or items to remove, and then select Delete.
Learn more about how to organize your inbox with Archive, Sweep, and other tools in Outlook.com.
How to reduce Loop storage
- Go to loop.cloud.microsoft and delete any Loop workspaces, pages, and ideas you no longer need.
Tip
Each workspace has its own
Recycle bin. To empty your Recycle bin, select
Empty all in the top right corner.
How to reduce Designer storage
Go to designer.microsoft.com and sign in.
Select My projects from the top of the page.
Review the size of your Recent projects and Generated images, deleting any items you no longer need.
Warning
Designer doesn't have a recycle bin. When you delete a project file, you can't recover it.
Go to onedrive.com> My files > Apps > Designer to see content that you generated or saved.
Other Microsoft storage hints and tips
If your storage doesn't update
If your storage quota doesn't update, check either the OneDrive website, or go to Outlook.com and select Email storage.
You can also check your storage by using the Outlook mobile app:
- Close the app (swipe it away).
- Open the app again.
- Tap your profile avatar in the top left.
- Tap on the Settings
- Tap on your Account.
- Under the heading Storage, tap on the subscription type (it will either be Free plan or Premium) to refresh with the most recent storage.
Note
If your account is locked, it can take up to two hours after purchasing additional storage for your new quota to show. If your quota doesn't update after four hours, contact support.
Storage best practices
Before you start deleting files, note that some files either shouldn't, or don't need to be backed up in OneDrive.
Outlook data files
Outlook data files aren't suitable for storing in your OneDrive because the app often holds them open. Trying to sync these files can slow down your computer and block sync. Learn how to remove an Outlook.pst data file from OneDrive.
Compressed archives
Compressed files such as 7Z, RAR, TAR, and ZIP can take up less space than their contents, but you only save space if you remove the original contents. If you have both original files and a compressed archive, consider deleting one or the other.
Downloads
Every time you download a file from the internet, you store it on your computer. Unless you specify a different location, the file goes to your Downloads folder. You can safely remove some files because you can easily find them again from the download source, such as application installation and set-up files.
Other files
If you don't want to include all of your files and folders in your OneDrive, move the folders to a location outside of your OneDrive folder.
- Open File Explorer or Finder.
- Select the files or folder you want to move.
- Drag the selection to its new folder and release.
Note
- Take your time moving files to prevent releasing in the wrong place. Press CTRL + Z to undo the last file move.
- If you move a file, the app associated with it might not be able to find it if it's in your Recent list.
- Files moved out from OneDrive aren't backed up or protected. If your computer fails, you might irretrievably lose the content. Files removed from OneDrive are held in your OneDrive Recycle Bin for up to 30 days - learn how to restore them.
Mobile
It's easy to back up every photo, screenshot, messaging image, and social media meme, but backing up everything without cleaning can lead to huge amounts of wasted space.
Tip
- Consider if you need to include all images in your Android camera roll backup. Learn more.
- Purge your backed up camera roll monthly - use OneDrive.com photo viewer, not the camera roll on your mobile.
Mobile storage tips
It's easy to back up every photo, screenshot, messaging image, and social media meme, but backing up everything without cleaning can lead to huge amounts of wasted space.
Tip
- Consider if you need to include all images in your Android camera roll backup. Learn more.
- Purge your backed up camera roll monthly - use OneDrive.com photo viewer, not the camera roll on your mobile.
Help, I deleted files by mistake
Don't worry if you delete any OneDrive files by mistake. We'll email you if we notice a lot of files are deleted. You can restore files up to 30 days later. Learn how.
When you delete an Outlook.com email, it moves to a Recoverable items store. To permanently erase all of your Deleted Items, you need to also purge all of your Recoverable items. Learn how.