The data in your George Mason Microsoft licensed applications is stored in Exchange (Email & Calendar), OneDrive, and SharePoint. Each service has a storage quota that is determined based on your classification. It is important to regularly review the amount of storage space you are using in each area to avoid service disruptions.

Note: SharePoint and Microsoft (MS) Teams workspaces are provisioned with 100 GB of space, with the option to increase capacity once the space is 75% full

Reaching Storage Quota

You must take action when you receive a notification from Microsoft that you are nearing your quota. When your account or workspace reaches its storage quota, your existing data will become read-only until you delete data.

• Email: You will be unable to send or receive any emails, and all incoming emails will be bounced back to the sender
• OneDrive: You will be unable to upload, edit, or sync new files in MS Office applications, share images and files in MS Teams Chats, save conversations with MS CoPilot, and existing files will become read-only
• SharePoint/MS Teams Workspace: You and members of the workspace will be unable to upload, edit, or sync new files, and existing files will become read-only

Checking Storage Use

"Me Spaces"

Use the following information to check your personal storage use and quickly reclaim space.

Email Storage

Sign in to https://outlook.office.com/mail and go to Settings > Account > Storage. Select Email storage to expand the section, and you will see a breakdown of how much space each folder in your mailbox is used.

OneDrive Storage

To see how much space you’re using and free up space if you’re nearing the storage limit, see Manage your OneDrive for work or school.

Important things to note:

• If a file or image is uploaded in an MS Teams chat, that file is stored in a folder in your OneDrive
• If you have made any Microsoft Loop workspaces or used Loop in MS Teams chat spaces, it is consuming space in your OneDrive

"We Spaces"

Use the following information to check your shared storage use in SharePoint and MS Teams Workspaces.

Check Storage via MyHub

MyHub Contacts and Owners can check the quota of their collaboration workspaces via MyHub.

In MS Teams, navigate to the MyHub App or navigate to the MyHub365 website. Select the Workspaces tab, choose columns displayed, and add "Storage Limit and Storage Used". After applying the changes, sort by largest to smallest to see which spaces have the most storage in use.

Check Storage via the SharePoint Application

Open your SharePoint site and click the gear icon in the top right corner (next to the profile icon). Select Site Information, then View All Site Settings. Under Site Collection Administration, choose Storage Metrics. From there, you can view each folder and navigate into each one for more details, showing a percentage of total storage used.

For ease, utilize sorting options in SharePoint to quickly find and delete duplicate or outdated data.

Check Storage via the MS Teams Application

In the MS Teams web or desktop app, select a workspace in which you are the Owner and navigate to the General channel.

Click Files in the upper navigation menu. Look for and select the three dots drop-down in the menu that appears below the navigation menu. Choose Open in SharePoint. Your browser will open, displaying the files in SharePoint.

Click the gear icon in the top right of the screen, next to your profile icon. Select Site Information, then View All Site Settings. Under Site Collection Administration, choose Storage Metrics. From there, you can view each folder for more details, showing the percentage of total storage used.

Reclaiming Storage

Before beginning, review the University Quick Reference Retention Guides to determine what types of data should be retained and for how long.

To quickly reclaim space in your Email, OneDrive, or SharePoint, you can do the following:

• Delete unnecessary emails
• Empty your recycling, trash, and junk
• Review and delete old data and documents that are no longer needed
• Delete duplicate files and versions
• Compress files and folders that don't require frequent use

General Tips

• Start with your oldest data. If a file or folder hasn’t been updated in years, it may be a good candidate for cleanup.
• Use filters to sort by age or size. Use https://gmuedu-my.sharepoint.com/largestfiles to find the files and folders taking up the most storage space.
• Delete email messages that are old, large, and include files or photos. To delete the file or image, you must delete the message it's attached to.
• Consider moving work video files to Kaltura and moving personal digital files to local device storage or an external hard drive.
• Clean up unnecessary shared files and permissions. You can stop or change sharing permissions for your files.
• Review version history and delete older versions to avoid excess storage usage.
• Sort files into logical folders to aid in site organization and avoid duplicates.
• Do not back up personal data to your George Mason Microsoft account. If you leave the university, you will lose access to that data.
• Delete workspaces you no longer need. EX: SharePoint pages, sites or subsites, Loop workspaces or components, MS Teams workspaces.
• Compress files or folders to reduce their size, storage space, and enable faster file transfers.

Troubleshooting

• If you delete any OneDrive files by mistake, they will be available to restore for up to 93 days. For instructions, see Restore Deleted Files or Folders in OneDrive.
• Once you have deleted an email, it moves to the Deleted Items folder. You may recover these emails or purge the folder. For instructions, see Delete Email in Outlook.com.
• Take your time moving files to prevent releasing them in the wrong place. Press CTRL + Z (PC) or Command + Z (Mac) to undo the last file move.
• If you move a file, the app associated with it may not be able to find it if it's in your Recent list.
• It can take up to 2 hours for your changes to be applied.