In October 2018 we knew that Gmail had reached the not inconsiderable figure of 1,500 million users worldwide, as Google itself reported through its own Twitter account. Which meant there would be one active Gmail account for every five people.
It is true that, since 2012, Gmail managed to position itself as one of the best email solutions , not only because of its simplicity of use, but also because it offers free access and access, in turn, to the rest of the services provided by Google.
However, when we have a Gmail email account that we no longer use, and we think it is time to delete it, it is normal for us to wonder how to delete a Gmail account . Where to start? We explain it to you step by step.
Before deleting your Gmail account you should know …
Unlike what happens with other Google services, especially after the unification of accounts into one (Google’s own) that the company carried out a few years ago, as with YouTube, by deleting the Gmail account it does not mean that we also delete the Google account to which our email address is associated.
In this way, even if we delete Gmail, we will continue to have access to all the other services of the Google account, such as our calendar, Google Drive or Google Pay, among others. Of course, when starting the process of eliminating the Gmail account, it will ask us to indicate an alternative email address , which will be the one we use to log in to the different Google services in the future.
Downloading our Gmail data
Before starting the process of eliminating our Gmail account, it is advisable to download our data , useful in case at some point or other we need to try to recover the account.
As Google itself informs us, downloading the Gmail data will not delete the accounts of the rest of the services.
To do so, we must go to the official Data Download page, and the different services and products that have our data will be selected automatically. If you do not want to download the data of a specific product, we only have to uncheck the box of what we are not interested in.
Now we select Next step and we choose both the delivery method, the export type and the file type (extension).
When the system has created the file (something that it does automatically), we will receive an email where we will find the link to its location, to proceed to download it. Of course, depending on the size of the file, the process could take from a few minutes to several days.
Deleting our Gmail account step by step
Once this is done, we go to the official page of our Google account. In the menu that you will find located on the left panel, click on Data and personalization , and then on Delete a service or account .
Now, in the section Delete a Google service, you must touch on Delete a service . And next to the Gmail section you will find an icon of a trash can with the Delete button, which you must press. Then you will simply have to follow the steps indicated on the screen to complete the process.
Is it possible to recover the Gmail account again?
In case you regret it, and depending on the time that has elapsed since the deletion request, Google informs us that, on occasion, it is possible to recover the Gmail address .
However, if it has been a long time since we requested the removal of the service, it may not be possible to retrieve the emails.
