In an email update to Microsoft Account holders, Microsoft announced that Outlook.com email attachments will count towards Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage starting on Feb. 1, 2023.

To help smooth the transition, Microsoft will be adding “at least” an extra 50GB, or the equivalent of Outlook.com web mail’s dedicated storage, to OneDrive cloud storage for a year, starting on Feb. 1, 2023.

Unlike Google’s Gmail, which had long since merged Gmail storage with Google Drive cloud storage, Microsoft Outlook.com had its own block of storage for attachments. With the new policy, every attachment will reduce OneDrive’s available storage. Outlook.com restricts attachment sizes to 20MB. Since 1GB is 1,000MB, every gigabyte can hold at least 50 attachments.

How much this will hurt varies from person to person, but it’s likely to have a greater impact on the users with a free OneDrive account. The free tier of OneDrive only includes 5GB of storage, which can be easily filled by an inbox with hundreds of attachments. Google, on the other hand, offers 15GB of storage for the free tier of Google Drive.

The good news is that additional OneDrive storage isn’t all that expensive. It costs C$2 per month, or C$19 a year for another 100GB. Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which all include at least 1TB, or 1,000GB, of OneDrive storage as well as the Microsoft Office productivity suite, start at C$79 a year.

In its Q1 2023 earnings report released on Oct. 25, Microsoft posted a seven per cent increase in Office consumer products and cloud services year over year. Office 365 Commercial revenue increased by 11 per cent year over year.

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