The Sheri Gmail Mission

A main reason for these issues is that Google Photos changed its unlimited free storage policy for photos and videos on June 1, 2021. Any new photos or videos uploaded to Google Photos after this date would use up the 15 GB on storage provided for Google Drive. 

This was very surprising since many people had moved over to Google just because of their promises that said:

• "Take as many photos as you want without running out of space".

• "Never run out of storage again with Google Photos".

• "Free unlimited storage for life with Google Photos".

• "Every picture and video that you have ever taken in your entire life is backed up for free with Google Photos".

See some of Google's ads here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/jsrihy/remember_the_ads_of_google_photos_of_never_run/

A lot of people moved over to Google due to these promises and stored thousands of pictures and videos in Google Photos. But nothing what Google had promised was honored by Google. It was not free, not unlimited, and not for life. On June 1, 2021, they changed the terms to "Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account. Your Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos".
https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-changes/

This meant that when people had moved over to Google tricked by the Google ads promising free unlimited storage for photos and videos, they suddenly filled up their quota quickly with the consequence that photos and videos were not backed up any longer, which people were not aware of, and that Gmail stopped working (which they eventually became aware of). People were now forced to pay Google to buy more storage to make their email work again. Another option would be to move all the Photos away from Google Photos to some other backup solution. But this would require a tremendous amount of work since many people had now stored over 10,000 pictures and videos, and Google didn't provide any method to delete all pictures easily from Google Photos. Each picture had to manually be selected one by one or in a range selection and then be deleted. Something that could be a monumental task to complete. Several people have complained about this, and several workarounds have been suggested:
https://support.google.com/photos/thread/197868/i-want-to-delete-all-photos-from-google-photos?hl=en
https://support.google.com/photos/thread/235329989?hl=en

Conclusion
Sheri's problems with her Gmail are due to her pictures and videos now filling up all space because of the change in Google's terms. The best solution is to remove the pictures and videos from Google Photos. However, this will require some extra work since Google doesn't make it easy to delete all pictures and videos from Google Photos. Overall, the following steps will be performed:

• Establish current status.

• Prepare the transfer of pictures and videos by purchasing a Microsoft 365 Home subscription for $70 which includes 1 TB of storage where the pictures and videos can be backed up.

• Start syncing pictures and videos from the phone with OneDrive.

• Stop backing up pictures and videos to Google Photos.

• Takeout all pictures and videos from Google Photos and back them up on external hard drives.

• Delete all pictures and videos on Google Photos.

• Verify that storage space has been freed up on Google Drive.

• Verify that Gmail is working.

• CELEBRATE!!!

• On your computer open a browser window (e.g. open any of EDGE, Chrome, or Firefox)

• Go to https://one.google.com/ 

• Verify in the top right corner that you are logged in to the correct Google Account to which your phone synced your photos.

• Look through that page and verify that things look as expected.

• Click on Storage in the left column.

• See how the storage is being used.
  In this case all 15 GB are used up. 14.5 GB are used for Google Photos.

• When the pictures and videos have been removed from Google Photos there should be more than 14 GB of free space available and Gmail should work again. This is done in the following steps.

• On your computer login to your Microsoft account that is used for the computer.

• Buy a Microsoft 365 Home subscription.

• Install Microsoft 365 on the computer.

• On your Samsung phone go to Settings -> Samsung account -> Samsung Cloud -> Gallery

• Turn on Gallery Sync with OneDrive

• Click on Albums to sync

• Turn on sync for All albums

For more detailed information see: Sync Samsung Gallery with OneDrive 

• On your Samsung phone open Google Photos

• Click on your account icon in the top right corner

• Click Turn off backup

• On your computer open a browser window (e.g. open any of EDGE, Chrome, or Firefox)

• Go to https://takeout.google.com/

• Verify in the top right corner that you are logged in to the correct Google Account to which your phone synced your photos

• Click Deselect all to unselect all preselected options

• Scroll down until you find Google Photos

• Select Google Photos

• Scroll down to the bottom

• Click Next step

• Select:

  • Transfer to: Send download link via email

  • Frequency: Export once

  • File type: .zip

  • File size: 50 GB

• Click on Create export

• The export will start. It will take some time before it is done and ready to be downloaded to your computer.

• IMPORTANT

  • When the export is ready to be downloaded to your computer Google will send you an email. Since you can't read email you will not be able to see this. However, this email is unimportant. Instead of checking your email when your export is ready you can check https://takeout.google.com/ since this is where the email will forward you anyway.
    These are your steps after you have started the export:

    • Occasionally go to https://takeout.google.com/ to check the progress of your export.

    • While Google is working on exporting your pictures and videos you will see Export in progress...
      This process can take a long time. Check back regularly to see when it is finished.

    • When the export is finished there will be a link to download the .zip file.

    • Click the download link and save the .zip file somewhere on your computer.

To keep the pictures and videos safe, copy them to two different hard drives that you store safely in two different places.

• Unpack the content of the downloaded .zip file into a folder that you have created.

• Verify that the pictures and videos that you downloaded from https://takeout.google.com/ are the pictures and videos that you expected.

• Connect one of the external hard drives to your computer.

• Copy the newly created folder with all the unpacked pictures and videos over to the external hard drive.

• Verify that the folder copied to the external hard drive is identical to the folder on your computer.

• Repeat the same thing for the other external hard drive.

• NOTE:

  • A preferred way to copy the folder to the external hard drive and to verify the success of this is to use FreeFileSync.
    FreeFileSync can be downloaded here: https://freefilesync.org/. 

Google doesn't provide a way to delete all Google Photos easily, see Google Doesn't Provide Deletion of All Google Photos. If you want to delete all pictures and videos in Google Photos to free up space, then you are required to manually select these items and then delete them. This can be a very tedious and time-consuming process if you have stored many pictures and videos in Google Photos. People have frequently discussed this issue on several forums in order to find some manageable workaround. The best workaround found so far is Peter's response here: https://support.google.com/photos/thread/235329989?hl=en

For more information, see also: Google Photos Delete Options 

To delete all pictures and videos in Google Photos and to free up space use following steps:

1. On your computer open a browser and go to https://photos.google.com/search/_tra_

2. In your browser set the zoom level to 25% get more pictures in the same page.

3. Select the first image by clicking the circle with the checkmark in the picture's top left corner.

4. Scroll down as many pages as you want.

5. Hold the Shift key down and select the last picture by clicking the circle with the checkmark in the last picture's top left corner.
   All pictures between the first and the last selected now also be selected.

6. Click the trash bin in the upper right corner in the window.

7. Repeat steps 3 - 6 until there are no more items left.

8. Go to Google Photos Locked Folder, https://photos.google.com/lockedfolder, and delete all pictures there in the same way.

9. Go to https://photos.google.com/trash and empty the trash bin.

10. DONE!

• On your computer open a browser window (e.g. open any of EDGE, Chrome, or Firefox)

• Go to https://one.google.com/ 

• Verify in the top right corner that you are logged in to the correct Google Account to which your phone synced your photos.

• Click on Storage in the left column.

• Verify that Google Photos is no longer using any storage space.

• Verify that less than 1 GB is used out of the 15 GB provided.

Gmail should now work again.

• Send an email to your best friend, callej@live.com, and tell him that your email is working.

• Wait for the reply from your best friend.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!

• Get some organic ice cream. 

• Find a Swede 

• Party Is Inevitable!!!