How to Retrieve Personal Google Photos Content Prior to Separation/Retirement.  

University accounts and the data contained within are property of Appalachian State University and every effort should be made to adhere to the Acceptable Use of Computing and Electronic Resources Policy for data integrity and retention: 

The University shall not be responsible for any personal material or information stored on University Information Technology. The University assumes no responsibility for backing up personal material or personal information stored on University Information Technology and shall have no obligation to produce any such personal material or information at any point during or after an individual’s period of employment, enrollment, or other affiliation. The user accepts all responsibility of removing personal materials prior to their separation with the University. This provision does not apply to current students’ academic work stored on University Information Technology.

Partner Share can be used to automatically transfer photos and video from your App State Google account to a personal account. For detailed instructions on how to use Partner Share see the Google Photos Knowledge Base article. 

Google Takeout offers you a way to export a copy of your Google account data to use as a backup or to use with a service outside of Google. 

For detailed steps on how to use Takeout, see the Google Takeout Knowledge Base article.

  1. Log in to your App State account and navigate to photos.google.com.
  2. Click the "Photos" button on the left. This is a collection of ALL your photos, including photos in Album labels. 


  3. Select the photos you want to download by checking the box in the upper left corner of the photo.

     Selecting the check beside the date will select all photos for that date. To date, there is no way to select all photos at once in Google Photos.

  4. Click on the three dots in the top right corner and select download. (Make sure there is enough space on your hard drive to accommodate the download, Google does compress the files)

3. The download will be offered as a .zip file in your downloads folder.  Locate the .zip file and open it. Click Extract all and choose a location on your computer to extract your photos. If on a Mac, the files will appear as a .zip file in your downloads folder. You can open the folder and then move it to the place you prefer.


4. You can now keep the files on your device, save them to a removable storage/external hard drive, or download them in to your personal Google account. 


For a detailed description of how to Share Google Photos to a personal Google account, see the Google Storage Knowledge Base Article section on Photos. 


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