Exporting your writing from Google Docs
Like many writers (and others), I use Google Docs for drafting articles and even putting together the finished product. Google Docs makes it easy for me write, no matter where I am and not have to worry about transferring files between my computers.
Until recently, one problem with Google Docs was that if you wanted to backup your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations you had to do it one document or spredsheet at a time. Or, you could use a third-party backup tool.
Google Docs now has a built-in bulk export feature, which lets you download any number of files at the same time, that’s easy to use and quite fast. Here’s how you can take advantage of it.
Before you export
If you aren’t already doing so, use folders to organize your documents in Google Docs. 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
You can learn more about using folders here.
Doing the deed
First off, 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
- RTF
- HTML
- Plain text
With spreadsheets, you’re limited to Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice.org spreadsheet, or PDF.
Once you’ve chosen the format, click Continue. Google Docs will convert the files and compress them in a .zip file. The .zip file has a name like documents-export-2009-10-25.zip.
If you have a lot of files, they can take a while to export. If you don’t want to wait, click the Email 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.
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.
A note of thanks to Ivan Walsh for pointing this out.
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