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Every message and every attachment your practice keeps takes up space, and each plan includes a fixed amount of it. Mail warns you long before the amount runs out, and tells you exactly what stops when it does.

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The one thing to know first

Incoming mail never stops. When storage runs out, your practice can no longer send. Everything addressed to you still arrives, and nothing is bounced or refused.
This is deliberate. A message from a patient — a referral, a discharge summary, a photograph of an injury — often has nowhere else to go. Refusing it because a mailbox is full would lose clinical information permanently, so Mail does not do that. Sending is the thing that pauses, because a message you cannot send is one you can send later or another way.

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What you see, and when

The banner shows the amount used, the amount included in your plan, and when that figure was last measured. Storage is recalculated on a schedule rather than after every message, so the number is a recent measurement rather than a live one — and Mail says so instead of presenting it as up to the minute. If it has never been measured, the banner says that too, rather than showing a confident 0%.

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When sending is paused

Two things are true at once, and both matter:
  • You cannot send a new message until you free space or move to a plan with more storage. The attempt is refused with an explanation rather than silently queued.
  • Everything addressed to your practice still arrives, is filed in Inbox as usual, and is fully readable. Nobody writing to you sees an error.
Anything already in Outbox when sending pauses stays there until you have room again.

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Freeing space

Attachments are almost always the reason a practice runs out — a message is a few kilobytes, a scan is several megabytes.
1

Find the conversations with files

In Mail, open the filters and select Has attachment. Sort by date and work backwards from the oldest.
2

Delete what you no longer need in Mail

Anything already filed on a client’s chart does not need a second copy in a mailbox. Deleting the message in Mail does not touch the chart.
3

Empty Spam and Trash

Both clean themselves out after 30 days, but clearing them by hand releases the space now.
Deleted mail stops counting toward your storage immediately, but it is not destroyed. Health records must be retained for seven years, so a deleted message leaves every view and stops using your allowance — we keep the retention copy at our own cost. That means deleting mail is always safe from a records point of view, and it is why your usage can drop the moment you clear a folder.

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Getting more room

The amount of mail storage included rises with each plan. Where an upgrade would give you more, the banner names the plan by name. Upgrading takes effect immediately — sending resumes as soon as your usage is inside the new allowance.

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If your practice goes far over

There is a second, much higher line that exists only to stop a runaway sender flooding a mailbox — well beyond merely being full. Past it, incoming mail is held at the sending server and retried rather than delivered straight away. It is still not refused: the sending server keeps trying for days, so the mail is recoverable as soon as you free space. Mail says so explicitly if it ever happens.
No. Nothing your practice does with storage causes a bounce. A person writing to you sees the same thing whether you are at 5% or at 100%.
Because it is a measurement, not a live counter. Recalculating after every message would be wasteful, so it runs on a schedule. Showing you when it ran is more honest than showing a figure that looks current and is not.
The next recalculation has not run yet. The figure updates within the hour, and sending resumes as soon as it does.
No. Secure messages in the client portal are stored separately and do not use your mail allowance.