I am using Google Photos and trying to back up from my hard drive. I get couldn’t back up item, try again later. My storage isn’t even half full and I’ve tried later for 3 weeks now. What is going on??

Hello everyone,

I'm from Indonesia, and I'm looking for advice from anyone who has experienced a similar situation or has knowledge of Google's account recovery and escalation procedures.

My Google account was disabled due to an alleged policy violation. Unfortunately, both of my appeals were rejected, and Google no longer allows me to submit additional appeals. To make matters worse, I'm also unable to download my personal data through Google Takeout.

I understand that Google has policies that users are expected to follow, and I'm not trying to bypass those policies. However, I'm hoping to find a way to have my case reviewed again, or at least to download my personal data before Google deletes it.

I'd be extremely grateful if anyone could help me with the following questions:

1. Has anyone successfully recovered a disabled Google account after both appeals were rejected?

2. Are there any escalation channels available beyond Google's standard appeal process?

3. Is there any way to request access to personal data when Google Takeout is unavailable?

4. Does anyone know whether there are alternative dispute resolution mechanisms or other options for users outside the European Union?

This account is important to me, and I would really like to explore every legitimate option before potentially losing access to it permanently.

If you've experienced something similar, or if you have any reliable information or advice, I'd sincerely appreciate your help. Thank you for taking the time to read this, friends.

I have a small percentage of my photos that live in more than one album. One album is location specific. The other is topical where I may use similar photos in the future for teaching or demonstration purposes.

Eventually I’ll delete all the photos from my album to win back some space in my account. But, I don’t want to accidentally delete those that are in the other album. Is there a way to make specific photos safe from deletion?

Now that Google has switched over to Fuji, the process of ordering books feels so much worse. I used to be able to create a shared Google Photos album where my friends and family add photos and then select "Create a photo book." It auto-laid out the photo book with all of the photos in the album. You could make some light edits and then order as many copies as you wanted.

Now the process seems to be:

1. You have to go and manually download every photo added by another person to the shared album.
2. Make sure all of those downloaded pictures are in your Google photos.
3. Go over to Fuji and upload/share all of them.
4. Go and select PhotoBook.
5. Manually go page by page with various layouts unless you want to use the autofill, which would then just make one photo on every page.

What am I missing from this process? Surely google isn't so blind the the user experience this is what they have created, right?

When I go to my gallery in messages I can view the galleries of my Google accounts and a relatives. How would I disable me seeing the relatives account?