Common Google Takeout Errors & Issues – Causes & How to Avoid Them

Google never gave us a reason to doubt it, but can we trust all its services with the same intensity?

It’s a fine sunny morning, you sat down on your system with an unquestionable belief on Google Takeout to have a copy of all your stuff housed in Google.

After a few clicks and sorting out the data you want a backup of, the downloading process finally begins.

A few hours later…

The screen shows 95% of the work is done.

Suddenly your electricity went off, and when it returns, there is a ‘Google Takeout Network issue’ message displayed on your screen.

Now, all you can do is try not to pull your hair out.

The above story highlights just one of the Google Takeout errors, the rest are lined up below.

Concerns with Google Takeout

Google Takeout Network error, 404 error and whatnot…there’s a long list of such issues and errors.

• Is it your fault that you are using Google for years now and have piled uploads of data?  Making the file size an issue, Google sometimes fails to create your archive file. The limit on the download of a .zip file is 2GB and of .tgz file is 50GB.

• The .zip file you downloaded has bundles of tiny files, that are compressed and incorrectly updated; giving you a tough time sorting these files out. This does not end here. It will be a nightmare locating the files at the time of need.

• Time to make some extra space on your drive! There are chances of receiving many duplicates of the files on your system when using Google Takeout.

• If the file format you have chosen for download is .tgz, you need to have separate software to access your files.

• What can be more irritating than to go back to square one because of a silly wifi issue or power outage? Since you are not lucky enough to hit the Resume button and start the download process from where you had left.

• Done with all the steps that were required of you, but being a lazy bum you deferred to hit the Download Archive link until the next week. Now it is no more in your mailbox! So, let’s start again?

• You are not in a hurry, right? Because depending on the size of your downloadable files, you will receive the link to save them after hours or even days.

• This is not a Candy Crush saga where you can afford to get unlimited chances. Here, if you try to download even 5-6 times, the download link becomes outdated. This will leave you with no option but to contact the Google Support guys.

• It does not even require mentioning, how important photos stored on Google are for us. However, when the files are downloaded on your system, they are not in chronological order. This makes it tough to find our favourite photos from the date we want.

• Not to forget your important emails, that you received in a .mbox file format. You cannot search, view, forward, or reply to them until they are transferred to an email client- Mozilla Thunderbird.

• What if you are outside with a colleague and want to discuss an urgent email with them? You cannot! Because the saved emails can be accessed only on your computer and nowhere else.

• This one is surely going to get on your nerves. After burning the midnight oil, you finally got done with your article from A-Z, but when downloaded using Google Takeout, the formatting was not the same as you had left them to be.

• You had worked equally hard on the presentation with your teammates. Now that you want to add it to your portfolio, you cannot! This is because it was ‘Shared With You’ and you are not the owner of it. What a silly reason to lose the files!

• After waiting for a long time, you finally got your backup file, but decompressig it reveals a lot of missing data. A simple case of ‘Google Takeout missing files’ issue.

• What if you executed all the steps correctly but got the Google Takeout not working message, ‘Something went wrong and we couldn’t create a copy of your data’. Well, keep trying.

Don’t keep counting on this service and get trapped by Google Takeout errors. Choose a better way.

No reason left for you to trust Google Takeout anymore. Choose a viable option instead

Gmail Backup tool is developed with the intention to provide an all-rounder experience to its users. Be it Google Takeout or any other backup service, it fills ups all the voids they leave. Providing complete data security, this tool is the best in the market when it comes to saving your data without facing any roadblocks in the middle. You don’t need to worry if your backup stops in the middle because of any power outage or any other reason, because here you get a Resume button to click on.

We know that some of us have no limit on the data that piles us with us, also we cannot compromise on even a peck of it. The tool doesn’t even want you to. There will be no limitation on the size of the files you want to download. So, do you have any reason to now use the tool?

If you are a Google Workspace IT admin with the intention of exporting Google emails to local computer as a backup, you can try our smart G Suite Backup tool.