A simple and easy way to back up your Google Docs

If you do a lot of your work on vari­ous com­puters in dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions (as I do), con­veni­ently access­ing your doc­u­ments is important.

Though I carry a 2GB USB drive every­where, I actu­ally find it easi­er to use Google Docs and store my work ‘in the Cloud’, so to speak.

But, that amorph­ous blob of com­put­ing-stor­age could crash, or my Inter­net con­nec­tion could be down. My pro­ductiv­ity would end unless there was a way to backup and con­tin­ue my work on my USB drive too. And there is.

Fire­Fox + Grease­Mon­key script + Down­LoadThem­All == Solution
If you under­stood the above head­ing, then you can see how I solved it. If not, bear with me and all will become clear(er).

First, install and run Fire­Fox. You can­’t con­tin­ue (and your brows­ing exper­i­ence will be greatly improved) until you do.

Next, if you’ve not yet installed Grease­Mon­key, do so now. This little applic­a­tion runs soph­ist­ic­ated scripts with­in your browser to improve your online exper­i­ence. There’s a whole host of cool Grease­Mon­key scripts to explore.

Thirdly, install Down­loadThem­All — a nifty Fire­Fox addon that auto­ma­gic­ally down­loads all the links or images on a web page. You’ll see how that works for us after the next step.

Finally, install the Google Docs Down­load Grease­Mon­key Script. This is the crux of the solu­tion. To quote the doc­u­ment­a­tion, once inside your Google Docs account:

Just nav­ig­ate to the doc­u­ment list that you wish to down­load and select the doc­u­ments you want to down­load by click­ing their check­boxes or click the select: all link at the bot­tom of the page. Click the drop down menu on the right side of the page that reads “Down­load Your Doc­u­ments” and select a format. A new win­dow will open and you now have a list of links to down­load all of the doc­u­ments that you selected.

The beauty of this script is that it you can select which format you’d like for out­put (PDF, TXT, CSV, Open Office or Microsoft Office), and it works with reg­u­lar Google Docs accounts, as well as Google Apps for Domains accounts.

To sum­mar­ize
By simply nav­ig­at­ing to my Google Docs main dir­ect­ory, select­ing ‘All Doc­u­ments’ (mak­ing sure they’re all checked), and then launch­ing the Down­loadThem­All Add on (now in your Fire­Fox Tools menu), I’ve eas­ily cre­ated an edit­able loc­al copy of all my work stored in the G‑Cloud. And any work I do on a loc­al copy can be eas­ily impor­ted (as a new file) back into Google Docs.

Admit­tedly, it’s not as easy as stor­ing it all on a USB stick. But a stick can be lost, and I’d rather have my backup go south, than all my fin­ished work should I actu­ally lose the stick.

Your thoughts? Would this work for you or am I too paranoid? 🙂