With Google Takeout, your users can download a copy of data contained in their Google Workspace account. The data is from core and additional services, such as Drive and YouTube, that are integrated with Takeout. For example, a user can download Drive files from their Google Workspace account and upload them to another Google Account.
As a Google Workspace admin, you can control who uses Google Takeout in your organization. If you don’t allow Takeout for a service, the user’s view of Takeout doesn’t include the service nor the option to export data from the service. Learn how users can export a copy of their content.
In this article
- Services available for Google Takeout
- Set up services with a shared Takeout control
- Set up services with an individual Takeout control
- Managing Takeout for your account
Services available for Google Takeout
Services with a shared Takeout control: Most Google services, like Drive or Classroom, don't have their own Takeout control. Instead, you allow or don’t allow Takeout for all of these services.
Services with an individual Takeout control: Choose the Takeout setting for each of these services. For example, allow users to use Takeout for Google Photos and YouTube, but not for Google Pay.
| Services with a shared Takeout control | Services with an individual Takeout control |
|---|---|
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Allow or don't allow Takeout for Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and other Google services. You can't limit Takeout to a specific service or group of services. Tip: For an example of the services available for Takeout, sign in to your Google Workspace admin account and go to takeout.google.com |
Allow or don't allow Takeout for each service:
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Default Takeout settings
- For Google Workspace, the Takeout controls are set to Allowed.
- For Google Workspace for Education K-12, the shared Takeout control is set to Not Allowed, and the individual Takeout control is set to Allowed.
Set up services with a shared Takeout control
Set the Data export permission to allow or not allow Takeout for Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and other Google services that don't have their own Takeout setting.
Allow or don't allow Takeout
For this step, you need admin privileges for Groups, Organizational Units (top-level), and Service Settings.
Before you begin: To allow or not allow Takeout for certain users, put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or add them to an access group (to allow access for users across or within departments).
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
Data
Data import & export
- Click User access to Takeout for Google services.
- In the section, Services without an individual admin control, click Edit.
- Set the Data export permission to Allow for everyone or Don’t allow for everyone.
- Click Save.
- (Optional) Set permissions for an organizational unit.
Note: There’s no gray dot next to organizational units that override the top-level organization’s setting.- At the left, select the organizational unit.
- Set the Data export permission to allow or not allow Takeout:
- If the setting is currently Inherited: Click Allow or Don’t allow, and then click Override to override the parent setting.
- If the setting is currently Overridden: Click Allow or Don’t allow, and click Save to keep the new setting for the organizational unit. Or click Inherit to always use the setting of the parent organizational unit.
- If the setting is currently Inherited: Click Allow or Don’t allow, and then click Override to override the parent setting.
- (Optional) Set permission for a group:
- At the left, select the group.
- Set the Data export permission to allow Takeout:
- To allow for the group, check Allow and click Save.
- To remove the group setting, click Unset. Now, users get the access setting of their organization. However, if the users belong to any other access group with the service turned on, they continue to have access to the service.
Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more
Set up services with an individual Takeout control
You can allow or not allow Takeout for a service that has an individual Takeout control. For example, let a group use Takeout for their Google Photos and YouTube videos, but not Google Pay. If you don’t allow Takeout for a service, the service isn’t shown on the user’s Takeout page.
For this step, you need admin privileges for Organizational Units (top-level), and Service Settings.
Before you begin: To allow or not allow Takeout for certain users, put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or add them to an access group (to allow access for users across or within departments).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
- Click User access to Takeout for Google services
- At the left, select an organizational unit.
Note: In this view, there’s no gray dot next to organizational units that override the top-level organization’s setting. - Click the checkbox next to one or more services in the Takeout list.
Note: The "Add a filter" button isn't active. At this time, only certain Additional Services have their own Takeout setting. - Choose the Takeout settings:
- If the status is Inherited: Click Allow or Don’t allow to override the parent setting.
- If the status is Overridden: Click Inherit to revert to the same setting as its parent organization. Or choose Allow or Don’t allow to override the parent setting.
- (Optional) Manage Takeout settings for an individual service. For example, view or change a service's settings across your organization.
- In the Service name column, click the name of a service (not the checkbox), such as Blogger or Google Photos.
- Select an organizational unit to view or change the Takeout setting.
For this step, you need admin privileges for Groups, Organizational Units (top-level), and Service Settings.
You can allow or not allow Takeout for a group of users rather than an entire organizational unit. This lets you control Takeout for specific users without changing your organizational structure.
Before you start: Choose your group. You can use an existing group or create a group.
Only user groups created in the Admin console, Google Groups for Business, Directory API, or Google Cloud Directory Sync can be used as configuration groups. You can't use groups created in Google Groups.
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
- Click User access to Takeout for Google services.
- At the left, click Groups and select a group.
By default, a new group has the settings of your top-level organizational unit. If you don’t find your group, it might be a group created in Google Groups, which can't be used as a configuration group. - Click the checkbox next to one or more services in the Takeout list.
Note: The "Add a filter" button isn't active. At this time, only certain Additional Services have their own Takeout settings.
- Choose the Google Takeout settings for the group. By default, a new group has the settings of your top-level organizational unit.
- Click Allow or Don't Allow. To close the panel, click Cancel.
- Click Unset to remove the configuration group. Now, users get the setting of their organization. However, if the users belong to any other configuration group with Takeout settings, those settings apply.
- (Optional) If a service has multiple configuration groups, you can set which group has priority. Learn more about configuration groups.
- Click the name of the service (such as Blogger).
- On the left click Search for a group. Any existing configuration groups are listed in order of priority.
- Adjust the priority of the group by dragging the group up or down.
- Click Save.
Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more
For this step, you need admin privileges for Users, Organizational Units (top-level), and Service Settings
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
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On the right, click the name of one of these services:
- Blogger
- Google Books
- Google Maps
- Google Pay
- Google Photos
- Google Play
- Google Play Console
- Location History
- YouTube
- On the service's settings page, click Google Takeout.
- In the top left, click Users.
- Click Select a user and search for the user’s email address (not name).
- Select the user to view their settings. Below the name of the setting, you can click the configuration group or organization unit that determined the user's settings.
Managing Takeout for your account
- Share instructions with users: How to download your Google data.
- If a user schedules a download before the Takeout service is not allowed, the download continues according to schedule. Only the user can cancel their download.
- Suspended users can’t download data using Takeout.
- If you are an Education edition administrator: Users can transfer a copy of their Gmail and Google Drive documents to another Google Account. Learn more
Takeout is turned on for a service, but doesn’t show data from the service
If a service does not appear in Takeout, the user might not have data for that service. Also, if the setting changed recently, it can take up to 24 hours for the setting to update.
A service is included in users’ Takeout download, even though Takeout is not allowed
- For services with individual Takeout control—Check that users are in an organizational unit or configuration group that has Google Takeout set to Not allowed for the service.
- For services with shared Takeout control—Check that users are in an organizational unit or configuration group that has the Data export permission set to Not allowed.
Also, if the setting was changed recently, it can take up to 24 hours for the setting to update.
Data is missing from an export
If a user reports that data is missing from an export, ask the user to retry the export.
- Check Google Takeout user activity. Takeout log events include information such as who started an export and which services were included. Learn more about Takeout log events.
- View changes made to Takeout settings in the Admin log events.
