The most difficult part is to select all your files: you need to go to the "All items" section, scroll down to the bottom of the documents list, click on the checkbox button from the toolbar and then on "select all visible". Google Docs uses "infinite scrolling", but it's not smart enough to select all the documents from a view.
After selecting all your files (or only some of them), right-click and choose "export". A dialog lets you choose the download format for each kind of file: Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice formats, PDF or some other formats.
Click on "continue" and Google starts to compress your files and create an archive. If you have a lot of documents, Google can send you an email when the files are zipped.
{ Thanks, StareClips.com }
Good idea, but there are problems when file names incde zip-file have non latin characters
ReplyDeleteI see "Bookmark" listed as a file type that you can export on those screenshots. What's that about? I don't see such an option when I try to export. Is this a new type of file they're rolling out support for?
ReplyDelete@Ron:
ReplyDeleteIt's about Chrome's bookmark sync.
Google Bookmarks already has export option but Google is playing monopoly here by including Chrome bookmark sync as part of the unrelated Google docs concept simply because it owns both things. This is no different than Microsoft Windows-IE combination.
ReplyDelete@Mohan:
ReplyDeleteGoogle is not a monopoly and it's certainly not a dominant player in the office suites market. Including bookmarks in the Google Docs may seem an unfortunate idea, but Google Docs is slowly morphing into an online storage service. As you probably noticed, Microsoft Sky Drive imports the bookmarks from Windows Live Favorites. It's more convenient to access all your documents, photos, bookmarks from the same place.
Will this also export files that are "hidden?"
ReplyDelete@William Patrick Wend
ReplyDelete"Hidden' Google Docs documents do not show in the All Items view, so you will have to go to All items-> Hidden and select them there.
It might also be worth noting that the maximum size of the zip-file for download is approximately 1/2 Gig.
ReplyDeleteI should have also mentioned... if you make sure to put all of your important documents into folders (by the nature of things, bookmarks synced from Chrome are always in folders)... one easy way to export every important file whether it is hidden or not is to click on MY FOLDERS on the left and select every folder on the right (Select All Visible should suffice, unless you have tons of top-level folders).
ReplyDeleteDoing this will create a zip file containing your folder structure with each document in it. All bookmarks, however, will be written to a single bookmarks.html file, based on the structure of the Firefox bookmarks file.
Someone complained that the bookmark tie-in is "unfair". Of course, Google Chrome is based on the open-source project Chromium. So, if you want to look into that source, it should be fairly simple to create an add-on for other browsers to sync bookmarks to Google Docs as well. Otherwise, I am sure they will eventually provide API access to this once the problems have been hashed out.
why does it export my files in .doc format? i am exporting image files and still it opens as an attachment in document file. i was expecting simple zipping of files.
ReplyDelete@Roshan,
ReplyDeleteThat's because Google Docs does not currently support images directly. When you upload an image to Google Docs, it stores this image into a Document file and saves it this way. Therefore, when you export again, what you get is this document file (Microsoft Word, if that's the option you keep selected.)
Directly stored images will not be supported in Google Docs until it is fully tied into Picasa Web Albums. In the meantime, if you want to store your images "in the cloud" I would recommend uploading them to Picasa Web Albums. Eventually, you will also be able to access these via the Google Docs interface.
A quick way to upload bulk images to Picasa Web Albums is using the Google Picasa software.
[why does it export my files in .doc format?]
Deletedownload yout pic as a html and your pic will be in the the html folder as a .jpg or png
http://www.facebook.com/CloudJanus
Hi,
ReplyDeleteReally a step in the right direction !
Does anyone know if the export can be done programmatically - ie thru any REST-api ?
Regards
Ulf W
@Ulf:
ReplyDeleteCheck Google Docs List API - http://code.google.com/apis/documents/overview.html
Hi again,
ReplyDeleteYou have previously been able to use the Docs List API to
loop thru the list of documents and then export them one by one.
What I am after is get out the zip-file directly with a REST-API
the same way you do it with the new zip-export function.
I think it's right to be concerned about google creating a monopoly. I think they're well placed. But including bookmarks is what i'd like. I'm tired of having 2 million different places to back things up. I want cloud backups of everything I do in a place I trust and I want to create zips of all the content regularly as a normal precaution. Bookmarks included.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you mentioned it. Was using xmarks but doesn't work for chrome or webkit so no help to me. Longer term bookmarks from gdocs seems a good solution
When exporting documents, is the metadata preserved, especially the MAC times?
ReplyDeleteI just answered my own question by testing it out. The answer is no.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I would not recommend any technology that involves any browser-specific technology (ie bookmarks in Chrome). Web devs have wasted eons of time trying to fix code and css for these proprietary browsers the past 15 years.
ReplyDeleteSecond, as someone mentioned, dont choose "All Files" but insztead go to "My Folders" and if you are managing your files in folders, choose your folders then right click your folder and Export. Your zip will contain both your files as well as the folder nest.
Linking, attaching, and embedding images is abad idea across the board. If you are also relying on desktop tools like Picassa, thats another dependency you dont need. The simplest way is to manage your images in your own website and domain, so you and your family have them forever. I use my own domain and ImageIsland software at giantisland.com to manage my image and use simply links in my docs. Much simpler and I manage my images on my own website forever inside a domain I own.
For companies looking for a domain-wide export capability, including the ability to export to the Amazon S3 Cloud, and incremental backups, take a look at LTech Google Docs Backup. A free trial is available.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ltech.com/google-apps/products/google-docs-backup
Hi again,
ReplyDeleteYou have previously been able to use the Docs List API to
loop thru the list of documents and then export them one by one.
How do you export e-mail files so they can be imported into Apple Mail or Outlook
ReplyDelete