from Transition from high school GSuite to personal GDrive Export the contents of Google Drive and import them into another Google Drive

Step 1. Export

  • Export all files and transfer them to your personal account.
    • This is the simplest method.
  • If you can use Google Takeout, it is recommended to use it for bulk export.
    • If you are unable to use it due to restrictions, you can download folders as zip files using the download feature in Google Drive.
  • However, it can be troublesome because the files are converted to Office formats.
    • When exporting, documents and presentations will be in MS Office formats:
      • Docs -> Word
      • Spreadsheet -> Excel
      • Slides -> PowerPoint
      • Jamboard -> PDF
      • Live comments will be properly converted to Word format, and if you import them back into Google Docs, the comments will be restored.
      • If you no longer need the documents, it’s okay to have them in Office format since you can still open them. It’s a compromise.
    • Alternatively, although it requires manual work, you can share the files, create a copy with the “Make a copy” option in Docs, and choose the option to leave comments. This will create a copy of the file with ownership transferred.
    • It would be great if you could do this for entire folders, but it seems difficult.
  • Also, files owned by others can be problematic.
    • For example, assignments submitted to teachers are usually owned by the teacher.
    • What happens when you export them?
      • They will be properly exported, so there shouldn’t be any issues.
  • What about aliases?
    • They will be exported without any problems.
    • However, it seems that folders cannot be exported.
      • Instead, an HTML file with a link to that drive folder will be generated.
      • Well, that should be fine (blu3mo).

Step 2. Merge zips

mkdir combined
unzip '*.zip' -d combined
- However, this method will result in Japanese files being lost.
- You may encounter an error like `checkdir error: cannot create combined/Projects/z_Past Projects/????????ա?????????? Illegal byte sequence`.
    - > This is an efficient answer, but on macOS 11.2.3, this unfortunately fails for zipped file names with some non-ASCII characters (like û). The solution of chanduthedev does work, when opening the resulting single ZIP file directly through the Finder. I couldn't find a way of having the unzip command to work. –
        - Isn't there a solution?
        - Ditto doesn't work either because it can only create one file.
    - It might work on Windows or Linux environments.
        - You can try it at the Columbia Computer Lab.
- Solution:
    - Use `unar Projects-20221207T211520Z-<number>.zip -o combined`.
        - This will extract the contents to the combined folder.
    - Repeat this for all numbers to merge the extracted contents.
        - Choose the Override option.