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- OK, so you’re using Gmail from your web browser, right, and for some reason, you came across an error that says Too many messages to download. Mail cannot be.
- My gmail account has stopped fetching emails from my server. It says: Error: Too many messages to download. - Answered by a verified Tech Support Specialist.
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Believe it or not, being over quota has nothing to do with the inbox on your PC, or even what email program you’re using.
But it might have everything to do with how your email program is configured.
Quota
A quota is nothing more than a limit of how much disk space your email can take up.
The catch is that it’s not on your machine, but on your email service provider’s server.
It’s your email service provider that imposes a quota on how much of their disk space you’re allowed to use. That could be Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, or the email provided by your company, your ISP [Internet Service Provider]
(Click on the term for full definition.)
For example, in GMail, I have this message at the bottom of the page:
10.33 GB (60%) of 17 GB used
That means I have a space quota of 17 gigabytes. Presumably, if I exceed that limit, GMail will start rejecting email sent to me.
Over quota
That’s the big clue in your question: the email program on your computer does not “bounce
A message indicating that an email message has been delayed, but may still be delivered, is sometimes also incorrectly referred to as bounce. More accurately, the final message indicating that the message had not been delivered would be the bounce message.
Bounce messages are not guaranteed, meaning that not getting a bounce in response to sending an email message does not guarantee that the message has been delivered. Bounces themselves can be lost in the mail, or email providers can elect not to send them in some circumstances.
(Click on the term for full definition.)
When your account is over quota two things may happen:
- Your email provider will reject email sent to you, since you have no more of their disk space available to store it. Usually the provider will send a bounce message to the sender saying that the mail could not be delivered.
- Your email provider may send you an email message to let you know that you’re over quota.
In either case, a bounce is being created, the fact that you’re over quote is being detected by your mail server without your mail program even being involved.
The most common cause for being over quota? Going on vacation.
When you go on vacation, you don’t download email, so it accumulates … on your email provider’s server. If, while you’re away, the email you receive exceeds the amount of space the email provider has set aside for you, you’re over quota.
The only real solutions are to:
- ask for a larger quota
- check, download, or clean up your email from time to time while you’re away
- move to an email provider with a larger quota, or no quota at all.
Now, it sounds like you may have a little more going on, since after getting back (and presumably downloading your email) you’re still running into trouble.
Email program settings and going over quota
When you set up your email account in a desktop email program, one of the configuration options you specify is what type of email server you’ve been provided.
Each can have ramifications on the amount of space that will be used at your email service provider.
IMAP [Internet Message Access Procotol]IMAP is an acronym for Internet Message Access Procotol.
As its name implies, IMAP is a protocol for accessing email messages. This differs from POP3, which is primarily a protocol for transferring (or moving) messages.
When IMAP is used by email programs to access messages stored on an email server, they are left on that server unless explicitly deleted or moved by the user. Copies of email messages may be downloaded, but fundamentally, IMAP provides what can best be termed a window or a view on a collection of email stored on the server.
While copies of email may be downloaded, enabling offline access, the IMAP protocol works best when continuously connected to the email server. Changes on that server – such as new mail arriving, or email being deleted or altered by a web interface or another email program – are quickly reflected in programs accessing that email server via IMAP.
Multiple-simultaneous access – meaning more than one computer or device accessing the same collection of email at the same time – is one of IMAP’s strengths, and it’s often the technology used by mobile devices, and even web interfaces, to manage email that might be accessed from multiple locations. The down side is the more or less constant connection that’s best used, as well as the fact that email accumulates on the email server unless deleted, which can sometimes cause email accounts to exceed storage quotas.
For more, see What is IMAP? And how can it help me manage my email? on Ask Leo!.
See also: SMTP, the protocol for sending email, and POP3, the protocol for downloading mail.
(Click on the term for full definition.)'>IMAP and over quota
As its name implies, IMAP is a protocol for accessing email messages. This differs from POP3, which is primarily a protocol for transferring (or moving) messages.
When IMAP is used by email programs to access messages stored on an email server, they are left on that server unless explicitly deleted or moved by the user. Copies of email messages may be downloaded, but fundamentally, IMAP provides what can best be termed a window or a view on a collection of email stored on the server.
While copies of email may be downloaded, enabling offline access, the IMAP protocol works best when continuously connected to the email server. Changes on that server – such as new mail arriving, or email being deleted or altered by a web interface or another email program – are quickly reflected in programs accessing that email server via IMAP.
Multiple-simultaneous access – meaning more than one computer or device accessing the same collection of email at the same time – is one of IMAP’s strengths, and it’s often the technology used by mobile devices, and even web interfaces, to manage email that might be accessed from multiple locations. The down side is the more or less constant connection that’s best used, as well as the fact that email accumulates on the email server unless deleted, which can sometimes cause email accounts to exceed storage quotas.
For more, see What is IMAP? And how can it help me manage my email? on Ask Leo!.
See also: SMTP, the protocol for sending email, and POP3, the protocol for downloading mail.
(Click on the term for full definition.)
IMAP by definition leaves all the messages that you don’t delete on the email service provider’s servers, in addition to copying them to your email program. In this case, the act of downloading and viewing your email doesn’t free up any space against your quota – only actually deleting messages will do that.
If you use IMAP and are reaching your provider’s email quota, you have three options to resolve the issue:
- Ask your email provider for a larger quota. This may or may not be available, and may or may not require payment.
- Delete messages. This might be the most practical approach if you want to keep using IMAP. If there are messages you want to save, perhaps save them locally to disk before deleting them from your email program.
- Switch to POP3 [Post Office Protocol version 3]POP3 is an acronym for Post Office Protocol version 3.'>POP3. When you download email from a POP3 server, it’s downloaded to your machine and removed from the mail server. Thus the act of downloading email to your email program automatically frees up space that counts against your quota. As we’ll see in a moment, however, this can have ramifications if you regularly access your email from elsewhere, like your mobile device.
POP3 is the primary communications protocol or language for receiving email from an email server or provider. POP3 is used by email programs like Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook, and others use to communicate to mail servers when downloading your email. It can also be supported by stand-alone email programs on other devices.
When POP3 is used, email messages are moved to the computer to which they’re being downloaded – meaning that after being successfully downloaded, they are removed from the email server on which they were stored.
POP3 is also sometimes used to transfer email from one email provider to another. For example, accessing your Outlook.com email using Gmail can be performed by configuring Gmail to use POP3 to fetch and transfer the Outlook.com email to your Gmail account.
See also: SMTP for sending mail, and IMAP for accessing email without removing it from the email server.
(Click on the term for full definition.)
Remember that if you download email to your computer using POP3, you need to take responsibility for backing it up.
POP3 and over quota
Speaking of POP3, there is an obscure setting that I occasionally see set when people don’t expect it: “Leave a copy of messages on the server”.
The location of the setting varies depending on the email program you’re using, but the effect is the same: rather than removing the messages from your mail server when you download, it leaves them there, and they continue to count against your quota.
Gmail Error Too Many Messages To Download Fix
In addition to asking for a larger quota, as above, your options here include:
- turn this off, remembering that your computer will have the only copy of messages once they’re downloaded.
- set or shorten the length of time after which email is automatically deleted.
- make sure to check the checkbox to immediately delete emails on the server when you delete them on your computer.
The bottom line is that if you’re over quota, you need to change how you manage your email, so less space is used on your email service provider’s servers.
The impact of mobile email
One of the reasons you might be seeing “over quota” messages a little more often of late is the rise of mobile email. In addition to reading and dealing with email on your computer, you might also be using a mobile device, such as a mobile phone.
The “problem”, so to speak, is keeping your phone and your desktop email program “in sync”: your view of email on both devices is roughly the same. Emails marked as “read” on one are marked “read” on the other, emails deleted on one disappear from the other, and so on.
The most common solution is IMAP. As I mentioned above, using IMAP, the “master copy” of your email is left on the email provider’s server, and your desktop and mobile devices are simply views of that master copy, though they may download local copies just to make things faster. Of course, as we’ve seen, IMAP leaves all the email on the server, making it more likely to run into a quota issue.
The other common solution is to enable “Leave a copy of messages on the server” in POP3. Again, as we’ve seen, that also makes greater use of the storage at your email service provider, and can similarly cause quotas to be reached more quickly.
The solutions remain the same: get a larger quota from your email provider, or save less email.
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