Everyone has at least one Google account and subscribed to many Google services ranging from Gmail to Youtube and dozens of many services offered by Google. Until now if you wanted to download your data (like Gmail contacts) then it used to involve many steps. But now Google has made it very easy to download all your Google data linked to all the Google services you use in one click. Google has started a new service (which is also a part of Google+) called Google Takeout. Using Google Takeout, you can download and export all of your data like Gmail contacts, Buzz comments, Google+ circles, Picasa web albums etc., in one click. Here is how :
- Visit the Google Takeout site http://www.google.com/takeout/ in your browser. You will be asked to login even if you have already logged in to some other Google service. This is to ensure security of your data.
- After you have logged in, you will be shown a list of your services for which you can create an archive and download it. To start creating the archive of your data, just click on the orange button Create Archive.
- If you want to create archive from some specific services, then click on the Choose Services tab and then select the services you want. You can select one or more services. After selecting you can click on the Create Archive button to start creating the archive.
- It would take some time for the archive to be created depending on how much data you have accumulated in the Google services. If you have an older account, then you may have a lot of data. After the archiving is finished you are shown a blue Download button clicking on which you can download the archive. For extra security, you will have to supply your account password again before you can download this archive.
- The downloaded archived data is in the ZIP format. You can use a tool like 7-Zip to open it and extract data from it. The Picasa data, as expected, contains all the picture files that you uploaded to Picasa albums or Blogger blogs. The contacts are in the popular VCF format which are compatible with most of the email clients like Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird.