Export Gmail and Google Calendar Data

Google Takeout now lets you export your calendars and it will soon add a similar feature for Gmail. The calendar exporting feature is not new - you could find it in the Google Calendar settings, but it's nice to see that Google Takeout gets more comprehensive and adds support for new services.

The Gmail exporting feature is completely new and it will be gradually released next month. It will let you download a big MBOX file you can import in mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. You can also use this feature to backup your Gmail messages and read them offline.

"You can download all of your mail and calendars or choose a subset of labels and calendars. You can also download a single archive file for multiple products with a copy of your Gmail, Calendar, Google+, YouTube, Drive, and other Google data," informs Google.

Export Google Latitude Friends

Google Latitude has been discontinued and a help center article offers more information about this. Unfortunately, there's something inaccurate: "you can't export your friend information out of Latitude".

Well, you can export your Latitude friends because they're added to a hidden Gmail group. Here's how to do that:

1. go to this Google Contacts page

2. select all contacts

3. click "More", then "Export" and click the "Export" button. You'll get a CSV file with all your Latitude friends.

4. (optional) import the contacts to Google+ and use location sharing - Google's Latitude replacement. Go to the People section in Google+, click "connect services" in the left sidebar, select "open address book" and pick the CSV file you've exported. You'll get a list of people you can add to a new Google+ circle (let's call it Latitude). Enable location sharing at the bottom of this page and restrict it to the circle you've created: pick "Custom" and select the Latitude circle. Unfortunately, Google only shows location data on profile pages and in the Locations section of the Google+ app for Android, but that may change in the future.

"Google Latitude will be retired on August 9th, 2013. Products being retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude. We'll delete your list of friends on Latitude. You won't be able to see or manage friends. Any existing friends will no longer see your location in Google Maps for mobile on Android, Latitude for iPhone, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude, if you continue to use these products," says Google.

Location History will continue to be available, since it's used by Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Now. "Google Location History is an opt-in feature that allows you to store your past Google location history and see it on a Google Map or in Google Earth. Your Location History is visible only to you." Location Reporting will also be available, since it "allows Google to periodically store and use your device's most recent location data in connection with your Google Account".

Export Google +1 Pages

Google's Data Liberation team added a new feature to Google Takeout: exporting the pages you've +1'd. The pages are saved to a bookmarks.html file that can be imported by almost any browser.


Google now offers three ways to bookmark pages: Google Bookmarks and Chrome Bookmarks for private bookmarking, Google +1 for social bookmarking. While Google Bookmarks supports labels and Chrome Bookmarks uses folders, Google +1 doesn't have a way to organize your bookmarks. While Google Bookmarks and +1 have Web interfaces, you can no longer view your Chrome bookmarks online.

Google Takeout

Google wants to differentiate from Facebook by offering a lot of ways to export your data. Google Takeout is a feature that's included in Google+, but it's also available as a standalone service. You can use it to export your contacts, Google Buzz messages, Picasa Web photos and Profile data with one click.

"Google Takeout lets you take your data out of multiple Google products in one fell swoop. Moreover, you’ll find that all your data is in portable and open formats‚ so it's easy to import to other services quickly," mentions the Data Liberation blog.



I've downloaded my data in a huge ZIP archive that included all my Buzz posts saved as HTML files, VCF files for my Gmail groups and the first 100 photos from each of my Picasa Web album. What's the point of downloading the first 100 photos?

Google Bookmarks Import Without Using Google Toolbar

I really don't understand why Google didn't add a feature that lets you upload a bookmarks file exported by your browser to Google Bookmarks. Google still recommends to install Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer or Firefox to upload bookmarks, but this shouldn't be necessary. That's like installing Picasa to upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums.

Fortunately, Mihai Parparita built a tool for exporting your Delicious bookmarks to Google Bookmarks and it can be used to upload any bookmarks file to Google Bookmarks. Here's how to do that:

1. Go to delicious.com and sign in. If you haven't used Delicious before, you'll sign in using a Yahoo account. If you've previously bookmarked web pages using Delicious, it's probably a good idea to create a new account.

2. Unlike Google Bookmarks, Delicious has a bookmark importing feature. Upload the HTML file exported by your browser and wait until all your bookmarks are imported.


3. Use Delicious to Google Bookmarks to import your bookmarks to Google Bookmarks. You'll end up with two new labels added by the importing/exporting tools: imported and delicious-export.


The nice thing about Mihai Parparita's tool is that it's open source and it can be modified to import HTML bookmarks file.

Export All Your Google Documents in 3 Steps

Google made it easier to export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs:

1. right-click on one of the files from the docs list and select "Export"

2. check "export all your files (up to 2 GB)" and click on "Continue"

3. wait until the files are archived or click on "Email when ready"

While this is a great way to backup all your files, an application that synchronizes your documents would be more useful.

{ via Google Docs Blog }