Excel is always my first choice in spreadsheets! Recently though , I’ve been using Google Spreadsheets, to help plan a family event.
I created a file and shared it with a few people, and it’s a quick and easy way for us to keep track of who’s doing what.
We Need a Backup
Then it dawned on me that we’re storing all this information online, with no backup. What happens if we can’t get to that file, a few days before the event? Too horrible to even think about!
So, I copied everything from the Google Spreadsheet, and pasted it into Excel. Not too efficient, but at least I had an offline copy.
Export a Copy to Excel
After I had created the emergency backup file, I looked around to see what other options there are for making the backups.
The first thing I found was that I could export to Excel, when I had a Google Spreadsheet open.
Click the File menu, then click Export, and click the .xls option.
In the dialog box that appears, to can click the Save option, then name the file and select a folder to store it in.
Save One Selected File as Excel
When you’re looking at the list of your Google Documents, you can add a check mark to select one Google Spreadsheet.
Then, click More actions, and click Save as Excel. (If more than one file is selected, the list won’t show the Save options.)
Download Selected Files
If you have lots of Google Documents, you might want to download and save more thane one file at a time.
To do this in Firefox, I installed GreaseMonkey, Google Docs Download script, and the DownThemAll add-on. That took a couple of minutes, and went very smoothly.
The script add a new menu, Download Your Documents, to the Google Documents menu bar.
Select all the files that you want to download, then click Download Your Documents, and click as Microsoft Office files.
A new web page appears, with a list of your selected files.
In the Firefox menu bar, click Tools, then click DownThemAll! Tools, and click DownThemAll!…
In the DownThemAll dialog box, click All files, or select specific files to download.
Click Start! to start the download.
What’s Your Backup Plan?
Do you use Google Documents? If so, how do you create backup files? Maybe you’ve found an easier way to accomplish this.
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Try GDocBackup (free and opensource)
Requires NET or Mono.
Runs on Win and Linux.
http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup
I use GDocBackup to download Google Docs. It seems a bit simpler then the additional firefox addons you are using.