Backing Up Your Google Docs

Like many writers, students, small business people and others, I useGoogle Docs for a variety of tasks. Google Docs makes it easy for me work, no matter where I am. And I don't have to worry about transferring files between my computers.

One of the main problems with Google Docs though, is that your documents are in someone else's hands. Or, at least, on their servers. If, say, you lose your Internet connection for an extended period or if you get locked out of your account ... well, let's just say that can be a problem.

To avoid that, or just to lessen any pain you might feel when it does happen, you really need to regularly back up the contents of your Google Docs account to your desktop computer or laptop computer. Luckily, that's easy to do. Here's how.

Doing the job, one file at a time

Once upon a time, this was the only way you could backup your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations you had to do it one document or spreadsheet at a time. Aside, of course, from using a third-party backup toolthat might or might not have been completely reliable or foolproof.

To save a document to yourhard drive, open that document. Choose Download asfrom the File menu. A second menu will fly out, listing all the formats in which you can save the document. With a presentation, for example, those options will be PDF, text, and PowerPoint.

Choose the format you want. After that, the file is saved to your hard drive.

If you want to back up multiple files, going this route is tedious. You can, however, use Google Docs' bulk export feature export several files at the same time.

Before you do a bulk export

If you aren’t already doing so, use folders to organize your documents in Google Docs. Folders are like directories on your computer. The advantages of using folders are obvious: you can group your writing and other documents, and tag them. And if you only want to export certain documents, you don’t need to hunt through a long list to find them.

To create a folder, click theCreate New button in the left part of the main Google Docs window and select Folder from the list of options that appears. You’ll be asked to name the folder. And that’s where you need to think about how you want to structure your folders in Google Docs.

To put your documents into those folders, find the documents that you want to tag in the main portion of the Google Docs window. Click the checkbox beside the document and then click the Folders button. Click the folder into which you want to put the document, and then clickApply Changes.

Doing that can be pretty tedious. A faster way to do this is to select multiple documents and then assign them to folders at the same time.

You can learn more about using folders here.

Doing a bulk export

First, go to the folder that contains the documents that you want to export. You can select only the documents that you want to export, or you can click the dropdown at the top left and choose Select all visible to export all of the files in the folder.

From there, choose Export from the More Actions menu. This opens the Convert, Zip, and Download Files dialog box.

On this dialog box, you can choose the format in which your files will be exported. For documents, the formats are:

Microsoft Word
OpenDocument
PDF
HTML
Plain text

With spreadsheets, you’re limited to Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice.org spreadsheet, or PDF. You can only save presentations as PowerPoint, PDF, or text files.

Once you’ve chosen the format or formats, click Continue. Google Docs will convert the files and compress them in a .zip file. The .zip file has a name like documents-export-2010-08-25.zip.

If you have a lot of files, they can take a while to export. If you don’t want to wait, click theEmail when ready button. You’ll get a message in Gmail when the export is complete, along with a link that points to the .zip file containing your documents. Follow the link to download the file.

That said, the process doesn’t take all that long. I exported a folder containing 78 files and the ZIP file was on my hard drive in well under a minute. Your mileage may vary, especially if your documents and presentations contain quite a few graphics.

Final thoughts

Exporting your files from Google Docs (or from any online service) is a good idea. It ensures that you have a backup of your documents in case of an emergency. The time it takes for you to back up your files is a small price to pay for piece of mind.