(For the sake of simplicity, I am going to refer to backups and downloads as exports.)Google has made it surprisingly easy to export your entire Google Documents collection. There are two ways in which you can export your documents: All at once, or by selecting individual files. If you want to select the individual files, go ahead and select them now. Otherwise:
Click “More Actions”, and “Export”.
For selected items, remain in the “Selected Items” tab, or click the “All Items” tab to do a full export. Google Docs in itself stores data in a proprietary format, so you must select a format that documents can be saved in. Carefully review these.
Tip: If you do not have Microsoft Word, I highly recommend downloading documents in the OpenOffice format so that you can easily recover these documents.
Remember: PDF Documents are not writable by many word processors
Google Docs can send you an email once all documents are done being zipped, just click the “Email When Ready” button.
Why would someone want to do this?
Besides paranoia, if you did loose your Google password you would still have your documents. Also, if you had a loss of Internet connection and you either did not have Google Docs Offline enabled or Offline mode was not syncing properly, you would still have a local [possibly outdated] copy of your documents. (This happened to me once. I did not have a copy of my documents, Offline Mode was not syncing properly. I panicked for the five days that I did not have Internet in my home.)
Limitations:
- Google can not export to OpenOffice Presenter format.
- Maximum of 2GB can be exported (it takes effort to go over this limit)
- Even Google’s document conversion program can loose semi-important formatting, so if the document looks funny you may want to change the export format.
- If you just need documents readable, but not writable, PDF format is the most accurate choice for exporting.
Excellent article! I could only add that since OpenOffice can load, and then convert from a Microsoft PowerPoint, the limitation of not downloading to OO Presenter is entirely overcomable [sic] (yes, I just made up that word)
I can also add that I personally use backupify.com to back up. It can backup Google docs, FB and MANY other online storables (Okay, made that one up too). I got in for "free forever" service. But it is also available, you know…, for m-o-n-e-y.