Hotmail/Outlook export

I have a Hotmail account that I regularly use to share pictures. I am not certain that I have downloaded all that I have received and there are are best part of 10 years messages.

I am now getting a warning that I am running out of “storage”. I don’t particularly want to pay for extra storage and have only so far come up with opening each message and downloading it in EML format to the PC. A somewhat time consuming chore.

The only bulk option I have found so far is to transfer/export to another email address.

Any ideas of (preferably) a free and secure alternative way of doing this based on experience?

What email client are you using? There’s usually an archive option somewhere that will move emails from hotmail servers to your local computer freeing up storage on the hotmail servers

I dont know about hotmail, but most email clients allow you to remove just the attachments of emails, leaving the text behind. Assuming you have got these photos stored elsewhere, you might be able to sort you email based on size, and see which of the larger emails can be either deleted or have their attachments removed. You might be lucky and find a few massive emails that you dont need, or can extract to your PC

Do you have a local mail client on your pc? I use Outlook client for example. If so you can export all of your internet based hotmail to your pc for storage in a separate file. You can then delete all on the internet storage and start afresh. Just keep your now local historical mail for access or reference.

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Update on attempts. I have tried PC based Outlook, Firefox, Win 10 based Mail, log on and I get an error message, essentially saying “not compatible”.
There is a function in web based Outlook which allows you to request “export”, they email a link which is meant tonexport as .pst files, but it doesn’t matter whether I try a Win 10 “upgraded” to Win 11 desktop, a laptop bought as Win 11 or a Samsung tablet, the download fails at 25%.

Strange. I did this and it worked on a win10 pc.

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It doesn’t help that I am battling with an average 3.7 Mb copper connection. I asked the provider to be added to the waiting list for fibre but was told there are no plans for further roll out until 2026.
My next thought is to ask for a new link, then visit a friend who is on Virgin, but he is currently on holiday.

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I haven’t tried to do this with hotmail, but you could organise your mail into folders (by year for example) then taking the oldest folder first, order the mails by size, manually export the top ten and delete them from the folder. Then repeat for each folder.

Regarding your export code, perhaps Outlook has a limit to the size of the export file, so export only the mails over a limited period, for example a year. Does it still stop at 25%?

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my export file was 2.3GB so not sure if there is a limit.

I am no expert on this but…
I had the same problem. Your Hotmail/Outlook storage limit is now combined with your cloud storage limit. Maybe 15gb together, I think ?
If you have a lot in your cloud (photos etc.), then your Hotmail/Outlook storage will be limited.
My solution was to delete some stuff from my cloud. Then the Hotmail warning disappeared.

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