Thursday, October 18, 2018

Using Google Take Out to Save All Your Google Plus Posts

There's been a lot of talk on G+ in the impending G+pocalypse about saving posts with Take Out. I thought a guide on how to export everything into individual html files might help. Step by step guide below. This guide is for computer web browsers.



        1. In the upper right hand screen, click on your portrait. When the box comes up. Click the blue “Google Account” button
       
        2. In the new tab that pops up, look under “personal info and privacy”. Click “control your content”

         
    3. Under the box that says “download your data”, click “create archive”.

     
     4. Select data you want to include by hitting the toggles on or off. There are many things you might want to include such as “drive” and “Google Photos”. However, for the purposes of getting your Google + posts, be sure to toggle on “Google + Stream”.



    When you have everything, click the blue “Next” button at the bottom.



        
        5. On the next screen, you can select a few archival options for the archive/zip file, including the delivery method. It defaults to sending you it via email. When you’re ready, click the blue “create archive” button.


       
        6. You’ll be taken to a screen showing the (probably very slow) progress. You don’t need to keep this window open, but you can cancel the archive if you choose.
    
     7. Wait for the archive to be created. (You should get an email when it’s ready). Download the file.
    
    8.  After you open the file, click on the Google + Stream folder and then under posts. They will be there as individual html files.
    9. Be sure to check the zip file index file to see if anything didn’t make it into the file.



    If something has failed, there will be a white exclamation point on a red circle. Click on it to see what didn’t make it.