Using Google Takeout

Google Takeout is an application provided by Google to facilitate en mass downloading your data from your Google Account; e.g., Drive documents and sheets, photos from Photos, Calendar entries, everthing else including Mail.  It can be used when deciding to close and delete your Google Account or simply deciding to remove data to store elsewhere becuase your Google Account has hit its storage limits.

This guide is written to address using Google Takeout on a Windows system.  The same steps will apply on a Mac or Linux system, but the File manager tool and operating system references will differ and the need for unblocking the archive files won't apply.

Downloading the Data

Once you receive the email that notifies you the process is complete, go back to https://takeout.google.com, locate the “YOUR EXPORTS” section, then click the [Show exports] button to view the list of export files to be downloaded.

Click on each button [Download] button to download a file.  Only click once or you will end up with duplicate files to deal with.  Your browser will show a downloading indicator (typically in the upper left as of this document) and wait for that process to continue, then click the [Download] button for the next file.  Repeat the process until all the files are downloaded.

MBOX File

If you include Mail data in the export, it will result in an “All mail including Spam and Trash-NNN.mbox” file being created for download.  This is not an archive but a format for mail systems.  This can be huge and difficult to utilize.  If you aren’t planning to delete your Google Account and continue using Gmail, just delete the “.mbox” file.  Otherwise, there is a viewer utility available here (https://sourceforge.net/projects/mbox-viewer/) that will allow you to view and manipulate the contents of the “.mbox” file.

Preparing to Extract the Data

Open File Explorer and go to your “Downloads” folder or wherever you downloaded the files.  The files named like “takeout-nnnnnnnnTnnnnnnZ-NNN.zip” are the files resulting from downloads you did previously.  The “nnnnnnnnTnnnnnnZ” is a timestamp of when the export was created and the “NNN” is the serial assigned to the file; i.e., [Download 1] will create 001, [Download 2] will create 002, etc..  (NOTE 1: It may or may not show the “.zip” extension depending upon your view settings in File Explorer but it will display an icon with a zipper.)

Unblocking the Archive Files

NOTE: This step is important so that all the data that is extracted is not marked as “blocked” by Windows.  Not doing this step can cause issues accessing the extracted data later.

Method 1 – Using PowerShell

Open the application menu – press the <Windows> key – then type “Power”.  In the list that appears should be an entry “Windows PowerShell”.  Click that entry.  (NOT the “Windows PowerShell ISE”; that is a different program.)  In the "PowerShell" window that appears, enter the commands shown in the image.  Once completed, close the window.

Method 2 – Using File Properties

In File Explorer, right-click the first file – the “001” file – and select “Properties”.  In the “Properties” dialog that appears, check the “Unblock” checkbox in the lower-right; then click [OK].  Repeat this for every file that was downloaded – 001 through whatever.

Extracting the Data

Once all the files have been unblocked, go back to the first archive file – the first “.zip” file and select “Expand All…"

”In the “Extract Compressed (Zipped) Folders” dialog that appears, the entire name will be highlighted.  Press the <right-arrow> cursor key to move the cursor to the end of the text, press <Backspace> four times to remove the three digits and the hyphen, then press <Enter>.

A dialog will appear to show the progress while it extracts the contents of the archive into that folder.  Repeat this step for every file.  It is critical that the digits and hyphen be removed from every file before clicking [Extract].  This ensures that all files are extracted into the same folder, recreating the data structure found in your Google Account data.

Once all the contents of each file has been extracted, you will have a new folder of the name used above and within that will be a “Takeout” folder that contains a folder for each of the data areas you selected when creating the “Takeout” export.

Reviewing the Data

If the defaults were taken during selecting data to be exported, there will be a lot of folders here with only minimal or maybe no data.  Review the list and just delete any folders which you don’t care about or which you never used.  There’s no need to keep anything you don’t need as it is just taking up space.

For those folders with data which matters to you, review the contents against what you see in your Google Account to confirm that everything came down as you desire.  You needn’t examine every single file. For example, with Google Photos, skim through the photos in your Photos account and confirm that those images are present in the download.  It will be your call as to how much to review before you feel comfortable that the download was fully successful.

Google Photos: ".jpg.json" Files

When data for Google Photos is extracted it results in the image file plus a duplicate file with the ".json" extension.  This is a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file that contains data about the image; i.e., location, timestamp, and other information displayed when you click on the "information" icon while viewing a photo in Google Photos. Nearly all of this information will already be embedded in the image file as EXIF data and can be viewed by any image viewer that understands the EXIF format (e.g., irfanview).  The only thing that would not be in the EXIF, is if you added descriptions to your photos in Google Photos.  So, these these may all be deleted or used as desired.  But note that they are not image files; they contain data about the image.

Clearing Data from Google Account

Once you are comfortable, you can remove all the data you desire from your Google Account.  Realize that removing all those Photos, Drive documents, etc. can take a lot of time.

Quick Removal with Shift-click

One way to speed up removing items from Photos and Drive is to click an item at the top of the page, scroll to the bottom of the page, hold shift, and then click on an item further down the list.  This will select the items you clicked and all of the items between.  You can then click the “trash can” icon in the upper-left to delete those items.  Continue doing this in sections as large as you feel comfortable.

Cleanup

Once you are sure that everything was successfully downloaded, you can delete all of the archive files.  To select all of the files: Click on the first file, hold the <shift key>, and then click on the last file.  Then, while still holding the <shift key> down, press the delete key.  It will prompt you to confirm you want to permanently delete the files.  This means they will be permanently gone; i.e., they will not end up in the recycle bin.

Note, however, that the export remains in your Google Account.  Should you feel something didn't go correctly, you can repeat the process by downloading the export files all over again.