How To Export Documents from Google Docs to Your Computer

Google Docs offers a great service that allows you to access and edit documents from anywhere there is a web connection. Sometimes you might need to grab all of those documents and bring them to another machine. Here we take a look at exporting Google documents to your computer the easy way.

Export Google Documents

Log into your Google account and go to the list of your Google docs. Now you can select the documents you want to export or select them all.

 

After selecting the documents you want click on More actions and then Export.

 

Now select how you want each of the document types converted when downloaded. You can choose different formats like MS Office, Open Office, PDF and others. Check the box next to Export all your files (up to 2 GB) if you want to export all of them. Yep, up to 2GB worth of files … if you have a lot of work in Google Docs like projects and collaborations, it’s nice to be able to export such a large amount.

 

A progress screen is shown while the files are being zipped and getting ready for download. If you have a large amount of documents and don’t want to wait, there’s an option to Email when ready and you’ll get a download link emailed when they’re ready so you can work on other things.

 

The documents are zipped up and ready to be downloaded.

 

Download them to a location on your computer, external drive, or network location.

 

There you go! All of the documents you selected to export from Google Docs are ready to be used in the application format you specified.

 

Conclusion

This is a great option if you need to get all of your documents off of Google Docs for some reason. The fact they allow up to 2GB worth of documents at a time is very cool. I guess I don’t know if I’ve ever had 2GB worth of documents before for anything, but if your collaborating on school and work projects you may find that much necessary. You also might want to export your documents off Google servers occasionally for backup…incase Google Docs is down or you’re away from an Internet connection and need to work on them.

Google Docs