Google Takeout has recently added support for exporting Google Fit data. You'll be able to download some CSV and TCX files that include your activities and daly aggregations.

* TCX (Training Center XML) is a common file format for fitness activity data that can be imported to many fitness tracking tools such as Garmin Connect and Strava. By default, Fit samples location data with low accuracy and frequency to reduce device battery consumption. These Activities are exported into the Low Accuracy folder. Activities recorded with Fit's active mode will contain more detailed location paths and more accurate data.

* CSV files are easily read by spreadsheet software or parsed programmatically but may not be easy to import into fitness tracking software.

How to export all your notes from Google Keep? I found two ways to do this.

One option is to use a feature that converts one or more notes to a Google Docs document.

1. Select all your notes: go to Google Keep and press Ctrl+A (or Cmd-A for Mac).

Important: This only selects the notes from the current view, so archived notes aren't included. You can repeat these steps for archived notes or select all your archived notes and unarchive them.


2. Click the 3-dot icon from the top of the page and pick "Copy to Google Doc".

3. Wait a few seconds and you should see a link at the bottom of the page that says: "Open doc". Click that link to open the document that includes all your notes.


Another option is to use Google Takeout and export all your notes as HTML files. Google Takeout exports all your notes, including archived notes and notes from the Trash.


You'll get a ZIP archive with HTML files for each note. The archive may also includes image and audio files. If a note doesn't have a title, the exported HTML file will use the date in the filename.

Google Takeout added support for some new services: Google Moderator, Google Groups, My Maps and Google Helpouts.

Google Helpouts has already been discontinued, while Google Moderator is shutting down on June 30. "Unfortunately, Google Moderator has not had the usage we had hoped, so we've made the difficult decision to close down the product," informed Google.

Google Groups and My Maps are still available, but Takeout lets you export your group members and custom maps.

I've mentioned last year that Google tested a download feature for search history. It looks like this feature is available for everyone. Just go to Google Web History, click the gear button and select "Download".


"You can download all of your saved search history to see a list of the terms you've searched for. This gives you access to your data when and where you want," informs Google. "When you download your past searches, a copy of your history will be saved securely to the Takeout folder in Google Drive. You can download the files to your computer if you want a copy on your computer."

Google will send you an email when your archive is ready to download.


The download dialog is pretty unusual. It includes a warning message: "Please read this carefully, it's not the usual yada yada." It suggests users to enable 2-step verification and it informs them that the archive includes sensitive data. "If you have decided to take your data elsewhere, please research the data export policies of your destination. Otherwise, if you ever want to leave the service, you may have to leave your data behind."

Here's the email message you'll receive when "your Google search history archive is ready".


You'll get a ZIP archive with a lot of JSON files:

Google Takeout added 2 new services: Google Tasks and Maps (your places). You can export your tasks from Gmail, your Google Maps reviews and the places you starred or saved in Google Maps.


Here are the JSON files that are saved:


One of the reasons why some Google products are added to Google Takeout is that they're about to be discontinued and Takeout provides an easy way to export data. I assume that Google Tasks will be discontinued and replaced by other services like Google Keep or Google Now.

Google Takeout has a new interface. It's easier to pick the services you want to include in an archive and you can now store archives in Google Drive.

"After we finish creating your archive, we will add your archive to Drive and email you a link to its location. These archives will count against your storage quota," informs Google.


Some services let you select the data you want to export: Gmail labels, calendars, Google Drive folders, Blogger blogs, Google+ photo albums, books.



Google can create a download link that expires after a month or save the archive in Google Drive.





Imagine exporting your data, saving the archive to Google Drive and then exporting your data again. This time, you'll also export the archive you've previously created. It's a good idea to exclude the Takeout folder from Drive, which stores your Takeout archives.

{ Thanks, Florian Kiersch. }

Google tests a feature that will let you export your Web History data. For now, the experimental feature creates a ZIP archive that splits your search history in several JSON files.





Most likely, this feature will be added to Google Takeout when it's released.

{ Thanks, Florian Kiersch. }

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.

A few weeks ago, Google updated the Takeout interface and it's now much easier to download all your data. The service supports 17 products: Google Drive, YouTube, Blogger, Google+ Photos, Contacts, Hangouts, Location History and more.

When you click "create an archive", Google selects all the products that are available and shows the size of the ZIP archive you can download. Archives larger than 2GB will be split into multiple ZIP files. You can switch to .TGZ (.tar.gz) or .TBZ (.tar.bz2) tarball files, but you need a software like 7-zip to open them if you use Windows.


By default, all the products are selected. You can click "select all" and check the data you want to download. Click each product to find more about the data you download, change the format and sometimes even filter the data.


For example, you can download Drive files from certain folders and change the export formats. You can export contacts and Google+ circles as CSV, HTML or vCard and select the blogs and photo albums you want to download.


After creating an archive, you'll get an email when it's ready for download and the link will be available for a week. You can find all your archives in the "my archive" section.

"Remember, your data is important! Do not download archives on public computers. It's important that you have control over your data. If you have decided to take your data elsewhere, please research the data export policies of your destination. Otherwise, if you ever want the leave the service, you may have to leave important stuff like your photos behind," informs Google.


Update: Takeout doesn't work that well. I created 3 archives (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2) for all the supported Google services and 2 of the archives failed at 100%. The only archive I could download included a 100 KB errors.html with a long list of files that couldn't be downloaded (most of them were Drive files Google+ posts).

"We tried our best to get your archive 100% right, but ran into a few problems as we were putting it together. Instead of canceling the entire archive, we've created this list of items that weren't properly included. Click any of the names to be taken directly to the item in question, and you can download it from there," informs the page.


I also noticed that not all my YouTube videos were downloaded. For some of them, YouTube downloaded HTML pages which mention that they were matched by the Content ID system. "Because someone else has claimed the copyright on some, or all, of your video YouTube has a policy of not allowing this video to be exported." It's probably because I used YouTube's "add music" feature.


{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Here's a simple way to find when you've created your Gmail account. You can always find the oldest message from your account by visiting this page https://mail.google.com/mail/#all/p1000000: you'll get an error message and Gmail will redirect to a page that shows the oldest messages from your account. The problem is that this is not a reliable way to determine when the account was created: maybe you've deleted some messages, maybe you've imported messages from other accounts.

If you've joined Google+, you can quickly find the exact date. Go to Google Takeout, click "Transfer your Google+ connections to another account" (don't worry, you don't have to do that), enter your password and you can see the date when you've created your Gmail account in the blue box at the bottom of the page.



Why would you need this information? For example, Google's account recovery form includes a question about this. "If you find yourself locked out of your account and none of your other recovery options work, your last option is to visit our password-assistance page and fill out our Account Recovery form. (...) Since Google doesn't collect a lot of information about you when you sign up for an account, we'll ask you questions like when you created your account, what Google services you use, and who you email frequently (if you use Gmail)."

I haven't tested this, but I assume this trick also works for non-Gmail Google accounts.

{ via TechAirlines }