{"id":1148,"date":"2017-05-07T14:36:04","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T14:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/?page_id=1148"},"modified":"2021-10-14T20:31:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T20:31:14","slug":"backing-up-your-gmail-google-calendar-and-google-drive","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/backing-up-your-gmail-google-calendar-and-google-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Backing up your Google data with Google Takeout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You can make a backup of any or all of your Google data &#8211; including your Google Drive &#8211; for safekeeping. This helps if you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>Accidentally delete or modify important documents or files stored in Google Drive<\/li><li>Need to back up an entire Gmail inbox<\/li><li>Want to protect your Google data from a catastrophic Google failure (extremely unlikely, but paranoia is encouraged)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A few things to note:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>Google documents are converted to corresponding Microsoft formats (e.g., Google Docs become Word documents, Google Sheets become Excel documents, etc.)<\/li><li>The backup can take up a great deal of space when it is downloaded..<\/li><li>Restoring an email account from a backup <a href=\"https:\/\/kb.datto.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/204324940-How-do-I-import-Gmail-MBOX-exports-back-to-my-Gmail-account-\">is complicated<\/a> and does not always work well with large inboxes. It is generally unnecessary (you can archive messages instead of deleting them).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to backup your Google data<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Google provides a service called <a href=\"https:\/\/takeout.google.com\/settings\/takeout\">Google Takeout<\/a> that allows you to download a backup of all of your Google data, from Google Docs to YouTube. You can choose which items to back up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to backup Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>Log into your Google (Gmail) account.<\/li><li>Go to <a href=\"https:\/\/takeout.google.com\/settings\/takeout\">Google Takeout<\/a>. This will take you to the Download Your Data page.<\/li><li>Under &#8220;Select Data to Include&#8221; you can choose what kinds of Google data to include.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You can leave the defaults and download all of your Google data.<\/strong>&nbsp;Just click Next at the bottom of the page.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Or, you can select only certain Google products to backup.<\/strong> In order to backup your Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, at a minimum you should:\n<ul>\n<li>First, click &#8220;Select None&#8221; at the top of the list of&nbsp;Google products<\/li>\n<li>Then, click the grey &#8220;X&#8221; on&nbsp;the slider bar beside each of the following items. Selected items will then show&nbsp;a&nbsp;green checkmark on the slider bar:\n<ul>\n<li>Calendar<\/li>\n<li>Contacts<\/li>\n<li>Drive\n<ul>\n<li>You can customize the file formats your files will be converted to by clicking Multiple File Formats<\/li>\n<li>You can customize which folders you download by clicking All Drive Data and unchecking the checkbox for Include all Files and Folders in Drive.\n<ul>\n<li>Click the Deselect All link if you only want to choose a few folders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Then click Next Step at the bottom of the page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li><li>This takes you to the &#8220;Customize archive format&#8221; section. The recommended settings are:\n<ul>\n<li>File type: <strong>.zip<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Archive size (max):\n<ul>\n<li><strong>10 GB <\/strong>if you are downloading from a wired connection on the campus network<\/li>\n<li><strong>2GB if <\/strong>you are downloading from home or from a wireless connection on or off campus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Delivery method: <strong>Send download link via email<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li><li>Frequency (manual or automatic):\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Export Once&nbsp;<\/strong>starts the backup creation immediately (it will take a while)<\/li>\n<li>You can also schedule an <strong>automatic export once every 2 months for 1 year<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Once you&#8217;ve chosen these settings, click &#8220;Create Export&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li><li>This takes you to the &#8220;Almost there&#8221; page. You do not have to do anything further.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Google will now prepare a backup (export) of your data. This will take a while, generally several hours. Very large backups may take more than a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Downloading your backup (archive)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>When your backup is complete, Google will send you an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>It will be from <strong>&#8220;Google Download Your Data&#8221;<\/strong> with subject line <strong>&#8220;Your Google data archive is ready&#8221;<\/strong>. You should read the email.<\/li><li>You will see one or more blue buttons that say &#8220;Download your archive&#8221;. If your backup is very large, your archive will be split into two or more downloads.<\/li><li>Click each blue download button.<\/li><li>Your downloads will be in your Downloads folder.<\/li><li>Once the downloads are complete, you can move them to another folder or to an external hard drive.<\/li><li>You&#8217;re done!<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sometimes spammers imitate Google emails&nbsp;<\/strong>and will try to <strong>trick you<\/strong> into downloading things. To protect yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>&nbsp;You must be sure that <strong>you deliberately started&nbsp;the backup yourself<\/strong> on the date in the email.<\/li><li>You should also check the products you are backing up<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">&nbsp;<\/span>and verify that these are the products you chose to backup. If you chose to backup everything, you&#8217;ll see every Google product listed.<\/li><li><strong>If the date or products don&#8217;t match<\/strong> what you remember doing, then&nbsp;<strong>do not click&nbsp;<\/strong>the download links.<\/li><li><strong>If you don&#8217;t remember starting a Google backup yourself<\/strong>, then&nbsp;<strong>do not click<\/strong> the download links.<\/li><li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Restoring &nbsp;from your backup<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Google Drive<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>Open the .zip file you downloaded.<\/li><li>It will extract into a folder called Takeout.<\/li><li>Open the Takeout folder. You will see your&nbsp;Drive documents in Microsoft&nbsp;formats.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have more than one archive, then you may need to look in all of them to find the documents you are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Google Calendar<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list is-style-padded-list\"><li>Open the .zip file you downloaded.<\/li><li>It will extract into a folder called Takeout.<\/li><li>Open the Takeout folder. You will see a Calendar folder. Inside the Calendar folder are .ics files for each of your calendars.<\/li><li>Log into the Google account that you want to restore the calendar files to and go to Google Calendar.<\/li><li>On the left-hand side, open the drop-down beside Other Calendars and choose Import Calendar<\/li><li>From the Choose File&#8230; dialog, navigate to the location of the .ics files and choose one.<\/li><li>Click Import.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have more than one archive, then you may need to look in all of them to find the documents you are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gmail<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Restoring a Gmail inbox is complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Essentially, you use Mozilla Thunderbird as an IMAP client for both the source and destination mailboxes, add the ImportExportTools add-on, import the .mbox from the archive into Thunderbird, and copy the emails to the destination mailbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kb.datto.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/204324940-How-do-I-import-Gmail-MBOX-exports-back-to-my-Gmail-account-\">There are instructions at this external site. <\/a>You can also search for YouTube videos that will walk you through the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More Options<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/accounts\/answer\/3024190?source=gsearch&amp;hl=en\">Click here for Google&#8217;s detailed instructions<\/a> that cover all Google Takeout options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can make a backup of any or all of your Google data &#8211; including your Google Drive &#8211; for safekeeping. This helps if you: Accidentally delete or modify important documents or files stored in Google Drive Need to back up an entire Gmail inbox Want to protect your Google data from a catastrophic Google&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1148","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5177,"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1148\/revisions\/5177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sciences.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}