Anyone know about Google Takeout?

[Rexthewolf]

Just wondering if anyone knows or has actual experience of Google Takeout?

Here's the story, I keep getting messages that my 15GB Goole allowance was almost used up. I discovered Google Takeout which supposedly allows you to remove all your photos, email and other Google data and store elsewhere. Great I thought, I'll delete loads of old email and move my photos to an external HDD attached to my PC - I had almost 12GB of photos. It takes hours to download these photos, at least it does on my connection, but eventually they end up in the downloads folder in 6 x 2GB Zip files. I dragged the zip files to my HDD and extracted them there and can open and view them now, no problem. I was happy enough with that and so deleted all the 12 GB of zip files from my downloads folder.

So what the problem? The problem is my Google account is still showing that I have 11.5 GB of photos. Its as if the photos were copied and pasted instead of being cut and pasted so I haven't cleared any space in the account except for about 2GB of email that I permanently deleted. I could just delete my Google account and create another but I need to keep my existing Gmail address.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[pabloescaban]

Delete the photos from the Google account?

 

[Rexthewolf]

Delete the photos from the Google account?

Any quick way of doing that? I have 12 GB of photos, thousands of them going back to 2013. Cant click and delete them one by one or even a few dozen at a time. I've only 10 years to live y'know and I'm not spending all of that deleting photos There must be some "delete all" option somewhere??

 

[pabloescaban]

Any quick way of doing that? I have 12 GB of photos, thousands of them going back to 2013. Cant click and delete them one by one or even a few dozen at a time. I've only 10 years to live y'know and I'm not spending all of that deleting photos There must be some "delete all" option somewhere??

Can you create a folder, name it Photo1, select all, then drag all photos into that folder.
Then delete that folder

 

[Willo3092]

I managed it using the Google api thingy somehow

Files: emptyTrash | Drive API | Google Developers

 

[Rexthewolf]

I managed it using the Google api thingy somehow

Files: emptyTrash | Drive API | Google Developers

eeeeeeee-hhhh! beyond my understanding and probably my skill-set too

 

[Rexthewolf]

Can you create a folder, name it Photo1, select all, then drag all photos into that folder.
Then delete that folder

I'll try that first. Dont understand Willo's api thingy

 

[Rexthewolf]

I'll try that first. Dont understand Willo's api thingy

Just another thought - if I do this from my Win 10 PC, and bearing in mind this is synced with an android tablet and android phone, will one of these devices not sync/resent the missing photos back to the PC

 

[pabloescaban]

Just another thought - if I do this from my Win 10 PC, and bearing in mind this is synced with an android tablet and android phone, will one of these devices not sync/resent the missing photos back to the PC

In your first post you said you put all the photos in six zip files?
If they stayed there after you deleted the six zip files you must have copied and pasted them , try cutting and pasting them into one big zip file, then delete it.

You didn't do them one at a time?

 

[Rexthewolf]

I'll try that first. Dont understand Willo's api thingy

I have tried this but selecting all has been the problem

In your first post you said you put all the photos in six zip files?
If they stayed there after you deleted the six zip files you must have copied and pasted them , try cutting and pasting them into one big zip file, then delete it.

You didn't do them one at a time?

The Google Takeout software automatically splits the data into 2GB Zip files in my case 6 of them, and puts them into the Downloads folder and yes, I dragged and dropped them from the Downloads onto a formatted HDD . I did initially extract them one at a time but when I found out that this was wrong I deleted everything from the HDD, again dragged them over from the Downloads folder ine one lot, highlighted all and extracted all together (after that I deleted the Zip files from Downloads)
Regarding your previous suggestion I have tried that but cannot select all. I have been trying to delete in batches for a few hours but its too slow but I'm now down to 10.5 GB. See below. But I've had enough for now. My heads spinning. Thanks again for your help

 

[pabloescaban]

If you go into the drive, then into the photos folder, then right click on empty space, 'select all' is one of the options, then right click again>delete

 

[steptoe]

Just another thought - if I do this from my Win 10 PC, and bearing in mind this is synced with an android tablet and android phone, will one of these devices not sync/resent the missing photos back to the PC

Well yes,
If they are still on one of the other devices they will automatically back up to the cloud.
Turn auto backup off on the devices

 

[Rexthewolf]

HI everyone
Just want to say thanks to everyone for their help on this problem which is now sorted. I'm now down to 1GB of used space (mostly items in Drive and some Gmail) and all synced up on all devices again. The whole Google Takeout thing is not well explained at all so I am grateful fo your contributions. Also found this YouTube video which might help others trying to clean up Photos

Happy Christmas to all 🤶🎅🎄