How to back up your Google account with Google Takeout
To keep your own copy of your Gmail, Drive files, contacts and calendar, use Google Takeout. Go to takeout.google.com, choose the products you want, select Next step, pick how to receive the archive and whether to export once or on a schedule, then select Create export. Google emails you a link when it’s ready, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Download it promptly: Google says archives expire after about 7 days and can be downloaded only 5 times. For a business that runs on a Google account, a scheduled export every two months is a cheap insurance policy.
Before you start
- You’ll need: a computer (Google recommends a desktop rather than a phone) and enough space on your drive for the archive.
- Applies to: personal Google accounts. On a work Google Workspace account, check with your administrator before exporting.
- Time: 5 minutes to set up; the export itself can take hours or days.
- How we checked this: based on Google’s own Takeout and Drive help pages, checked October 19, 2026 and rechecked October 27, 2026, plus a university IT guide to Takeout exports for file formats.
Why back up a Google account
Keeping your data in Google isn’t the same as having a backup you control. If you lose access to the account, delete something by mistake, or have it emptied by someone who got in, a copy on your own drive is what’s left. Google says files in the Drive trash are deleted forever after 30 days, so a mistake you don’t notice for a month can’t be undone from inside Google.
Create an export
- Go to takeout.google.com and sign in.
- Products you use are already ticked. Untick any you don’t need. For a business, the essentials are usually your mail, Drive files, contacts and calendar. Google says some products also let you choose specific data within them, which can make the archive much smaller.
- Select Next step.
- Choose a delivery method: a download link by email, or delivery to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Box.
- Choose a one-time export, or schedule regular exports.
- Choose a file type and size.
- Select Create export.
Choose the right options
- Delivery: a download link is simplest. Delivering to another cloud service, such as Dropbox or OneDrive, puts the copy outside Google, which is the point of a backup.
- Frequency: Google says scheduled exports run every 2 months for one year. Set a reminder to renew it after the year.
- File type: choose .zip on Windows. Google notes that .tgz files may need extra software on Windows.
- Size: the default is 2GB per file. If your data is bigger than the size you choose, Google splits it into several archives. Google says choosing the 50GB size makes splitting less likely.
What’s in the archive
Takeout gives you one folder per product. The formats are standard ones, so you don’t need Google to open them:
| Product | What you get | Opens in |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | One .mbox file per export (or per label you chose). Each message keeps its labels in an X-Gmail-Labels header. | An email app that imports MBOX, such as Apple Mail or Thunderbird |
| Drive | Your files. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are converted to Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. | Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or Drive again |
| Contacts | vCard (.vcf) files | Almost any contacts app, including iPhone, Outlook and Google Contacts |
| Calendar | One .ics file per calendar | Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar |
| Google Photos | Your photos and videos, with timestamps kept in the files and extra details such as comments in separate JSON files | Any photo app |
Open the archive_browser.html file in the top folder of the archive for Google’s own description of what each file contains.
How to restore your data from the archive
A backup is only useful if you can get the data back. Try one of these once, on a single small item, so you know it works before you need it:
- Contacts: go to contacts.google.com, select Import and choose the .vcf file. It works the same way for a new Google account.
- Calendar: in Google Calendar on a computer, open Settings > Import & export and import the .ics file into the calendar you pick.
- Drive files: upload them back to Drive. Office files can be opened as Google Docs, Sheets or Slides again.
- Email: Gmail can’t import an .mbox file directly. To read old mail, import the file into a desktop email app: Apple Mail has File > Import Mailboxes, and Thunderbird can do it with the free ImportExportTools NG add-on. To move the mail into a new Gmail account, add that account to the same app and drag the messages across.
Takeout vs. syncing with Drive for desktop
Syncing Drive to your computer isn’t a backup on its own. A sync copy follows the original: if a file is deleted, overwritten or encrypted by ransomware in Drive, the synced copy changes too. A Takeout archive is a snapshot that stays as it was on the day you made it. That’s why it pays to keep a few dated archives rather than only the latest one.
On a work account, Takeout may be switched off. Google Workspace admins decide which products users can export, and they can export the whole organization’s data themselves.
Download and store the archive
When Google emails you, follow the link and download the archive. Google may ask for your password and two-step verification code first. Then:
- Store it somewhere other than your laptop alone, such as an external drive.
- Open the archive_browser.html file inside; Google includes it to explain what each file contains.
Remember that downloading doesn’t delete anything from Google. Your data stays in your account as normal.
Limits to know
- Archives expire after about 7 days, and each can be downloaded 5 times, according to Google. After that, create a new one.
- Recent changes may be missing. Google says changes made after you request an archive may not be included.
- You can’t export a date range; Google says timeframe-based exports aren’t supported.
If it doesn’t work
- The export failed: Google suggests trying again, or exporting one product at a time.
- The link has expired: create a new export.
- The archive is huge: export only what you’d actually need to restore, such as Mail and Drive, or choose a larger archive size.
- Your Google storage is the real problem: free up space in Drive, Gmail and Google Photos first, since all three share the same storage.
Related guides
Sources
- Google Account: How to download your Google data
- Google Drive: Delete files in Google Drive
- Case Western Reserve University UTech: Migrating data out of Google Workspace using Google Takeout
Last checked: October 27, 2026. Google changes Takeout from time to time. If something here no longer matches what you see, let us know.
