Why does mail take up so much space?

Question

Level 1

8 points

Why does mail take up so much space?

The Mail app seems to take up a massive amount of space. I have Gmail and Outlook accounts synced, amounting to 1.9GB according to the Usage stats. I set Outlook to sync just a day's worth of email - no impact at all - so I deleted Gmail out altogether, which took care of 300MB, so I still have 1.6GB sitting under Mail, but only have a handful of emails and no attachments.

So is it the app itself that takes up so much space?! If not, what I can do to free up more space?

iPhone 5s

Posted on Jan 25, 2015 12:17 PM

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Answer 1

rme_lowe Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 25, 2015 1:46 PM in response to rme_lowe

I contacted Apple who had me back up to my macbook then restart the iPhone and delete my mail accounts.

Still 1.6GB of data under messages and no email accounts.

At this point the advisor, Ross, suggested I delete some of my photos and disconnected...

I thought Apple support was meant to be amongst the best.

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Answer 2

Jan 25, 2015 1:53 PM in response to rme_lowe

rme_lowe wrote:

Before I do that could you explain why?

Because if there is fragmented data on the device that is causing more storage to be used than it should, then the process of creating a backup and restoring the backup acts like a filter and restructuring of that data, sort of like a defragmentation of a computer's hard drive.

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Answer 3

Jan 25, 2015 1:52 PM in response to rme_lowe

rme_lowe wrote:

I contacted Apple who had me back up to my macbook then restart the iPhone and delete my mail accounts.

Still 1.6GB of data under messages and no email accounts.

At this point the advisor, Ross, suggested I delete some of my photos and disconnected...

I thought Apple support was meant to be amongst the best.

And did you ever try what I recommended?

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