It’s a terrible feeling to lose important emails or documents. We’ve all done it at some point, and the results can range from mildly inconvenient to truly devastating. I want to make sure that you are armed with the necessary information to keep your Google data safe. Here are some tips that you can start using immediately.
Protect your account
- Never share your password with anyone. Ever.
- Always log out or lock your computer if you need to step away. By keeping your account safe you help protect your data.
Delete + Empty Trash = Gone forever
In Google, it takes two steps to permanently delete a document or an email.
- First, you must click the Delete button or the trashcan icon. Your data is now in the trashcan, but you can still recover it for 30 days.
- The second step is to empty the trash. This action is permanent and cannot be reversed, even by IT.
It’s your choice whether to permanently delete emails and documents.
- Some users choose not to permanently delete because our Google Accounts have an incredible amount of storage—30 GB shared between Gmail and Drive. Most of us will only ever use a tiny fraction of that space.
- Other users like to keep things tidy by periodically clearing out the clutter. Remember that any documents or emails that go out with the trash are gone forever. IT cannot recover them.
Backup your Google data using the Takeout tool
Google Takeout lets you create a custom archive of of your Google data. The Takeout tool is very intuitive and easy to use, but if you need more information please visit Google’s support page.
Google Takeout is optional, but I encourage you to try it. The time it takes now may save you lots of anguish later on.
Do you have any thoughts on preventing data loss? Please chime in below.
Andrew
