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Script to sort your Gmail messages by size using Google docs

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IainB:
When my Gmail mailbox got to about 40% storage utilisation, I set about clearing out the large emails. I deleted those I didn't want to keep, but those I did had their bulky contents archived.
My search-and-archive process was:

* identify those emails with documents attached or containing embedded images;
* save the attachments/images to disk or Gdocs;
* forward the containing emails - but now containing nothing - to myself, adding links or references to where embedded/attached items had been stored.
* delete the original email and its contained/attached items.Over time, using this method, I reduced my Gmail storage utilisation to 20%, and without losing/deleting any emails that I wanted to keep.

The process I used is an ironically manually intensive approach to cleaning out a sophisticated hi-tech computer data storage and retrieval system. It pained me to do it, as I really could have used something that automated aspects of the search-and-archive process to make it more efficient.
Today I came across this script. It seems to work, and I am running it now:
Sort your Gmail Messages by Size using Google Docs

eleman:
weehaa... muchos fantasticos

Thanks a ton, wifey managed to fill her gmail account. This will make clean-up much easier.

tomos:
Thanks, I'm up at 5.5GB mainly due to lots of large Tiff attachments.

How long did it take? Slow here...
It stopped a couple of times but seems to be running okay now.

It's a bummer that you cant just remove attachments in gmail...

rgdot:
One of the most useful tools in a while  :Thmbsup:

IainB:
weehaa... muchos fantasticos
-eleman (April 19, 2012, 06:32 PM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, that's sort of what I said too.  
I am still running the script. It's doing quite a lot of work! - covering thousands of emails. It keeps getting timed-out by Google with the warning message:
Oops
Exceeded maximum execution time

--- End quote ---
When that happens I just restart it ("Scan mailbox" from the script's new Gmail dropdown menu) and it seems to continue from where it last left off in the spreadsheet.  
But when it's done, the spreadsheet should be a very useful tool for taking stock of your bloated emails.
You should then be able to deal with the top 20% of your biggest emails first, and apply the Pareto principle to removing 80% of your remaining Gmail bloat.

We shall see.
EDIT: I've just edited the thing per where the labnol post says Scan Gmail Messages with a trigger, so that the scan runs every 10 minutes instead of my having to manually start/restart he scan.
Smart thinking Batman.    :-[

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