topic Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address in Email

Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

BryanHardwick — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:44:02 GMT

I have discovered today that I cannot do anything with my care4free emails, if I try to move mail from the inbox to a folder the system says "no free disk space".
If I try to send a mail it sends it and then says "unable to save, no free disk space".

If I try to delete a mail it says "no free disk space, use SHIFT+DEL"; of course this permanently deletes the mail.

I have tried to send myself a number of emails from other accounts and nothing received.
I use my care4free.net email account for a number of important financial systems and being without it is causing me some issues.

I have also deleted a number of historic emails to see if I can free some space.

Is anyone else getting these issues and if so is there any chance of a fix?

Cheers

Bryan

Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

Townman — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:58:36 GMT

Hi @BryanHardwick

A warm welcome to the forums...

@BryanHardwick wrote:

If I try to delete a mail it says "no free disk space, use SHIFT+DEL"; of course this permanently deletes the mail.

Indeed it does and seems to be exactly what you need.

Your mailbox has become totally full; until you creates space, you will not be able to do the things you usually do. This often happens when someone sends you and email with a massive attachment, as in using email as a courier service (rather than a messaging service) to 'share' photographs ... instead of sharing via cloud storage.

Until you have created 'shuffle room' your only options are...

Hard deletes as described above
Makes sure the trash folder is empty

Just to cover all bases, do you get the same experience if you try to send / delete / move emails using the webmail interface? I reflect on the experience of a friend a couple of weeks ago (who keeps multiple copied of everything forever) who discovered his PC's disk was full. That could give a similar experience and needs a different solution.

Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

BryanHardwick — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:49:36 GMT

Thanks for your reply Townman, I have deleted around 100 archived items now and the system seems to be working again.

Can you tell me where I can see the amount of disk space I am using is displayed so that I can keep an eye on it?

Cheers, Bryan

Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

Townman — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:09:43 GMT

That varies by email client.

Determining IMAP mailbox size.

Mailbox size can be found in some clients by various means, but there is nothing I am aware of on iPhones, iPads or MACOS clients.

MS Outlook will give you some indication for utilisation as follows

Right click on the account in the left panel
Select Data File Properties
Click the Folder Size Button
Read: Total Size (including subfolders)

Using RoundCube Webmail

Select Folder Actions... (cog icon bottom left)
Select Manage folders
Select each top level folder
Select the Information tab
Click "Click to get folder size"
Do each top level folder in turn
Add them up

The figure found / calculated might not be precisely the same as on the server, but it will be near enough. If you have more than one mailbox on the account, you need to do this for all mailboxes and take the sum of them.

Pre-migration, the ACCOUNT storage allowances (across all mailboxes) are...

Plusnet, Free-online and Force9 1GB - when 'full' emails may still be received and sent, but be aware that the contents are liable to being archived after 30 days of non-rectification
The rest (Brightview and MAAF brands) have a hard 250MB allowance - when full no mail may be received, sent and in some cases deleted**

Post migration all accounts have a hard 2GB allowance - when full no mail may be received, sent and in some cases deleted**

**The standard action of DELETE is a MOVE to the trash folder - that requires free space on the server; if it is totally full the standard delete will not work. The following might be found helpful...

Empty the trash folder if there is anything in it
Do a HARD delete - most email clients will do a non-recoverable delete in situ if the SHIFT key is depressed when doing a standard delete from (for example) the inbox - such deletes DO NOT go into the trash folder, so be careful!

Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

BryanHardwick — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 07:03:16 GMT

Thanks again Townman, bit of a lengthy process but I now have a way of monitoring the situation.

Re: Cannot save sent mails, recieve, delete or move E-mails on care4free email address

Townman — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 07:16:35 GMT

The “fix” designation is not “this issue is fixed” but rather “this post fixed it for me”.

For a post to be marked “this fixed it for me” it needs to describe a solution which might help others. In what “way” have you devised something which provides a reusable resolution?

You can remove the “this fixed it” designation on a post using the post options drop down.