Google Photos / missionary storage

[emilybaileys]

Hello! I am looking for a way to add storage to my missionary's google photos. I currently have a google one family account and tried adding her that way, but when trying to accept the invitation it says that it's not possible because her google account is a g suite account. When trying to BUY new storage for her using her google account, it tells me that the administrator is only allowed to make those changes. She is about out of space and I'd really like to get this taken care of. There should be an easier way than me logging into her google photos account and trying to keep track of which ones I've downloaded and saved to my home computer. I'm worried that I'll miss some important photos for her. Plus this doesn't help with her shared albums with other missionaries. Any help would be SO appreciated!!

[russellhltn]

When no one replies to an online post, it usually means no one has any ideas. As you've discovered, the missionary account is a church account and only they can make changes. I think downloading and deleting the older photos is the only solution.

As for the shared photos, missionary accounts are deleted a few months after the missionary returns. Anyone who wants those photos will have to download them for themselves.

[emilybaileys]

Thank you. I’m new to using forums and didn’t know if my original question was listed in the right spot (which is why I created a new topic/conversation). I appreciate your opinion - thank you for your feedback

[richielloydbrown]

Unfortunately, Google recently removed the ability to add more storage on our missionary.org accounts or we would just recommend subscribing them to more storage on their missionary accounts. Instead, what we recommend missionary families do is to share a Google photos album from their Google account with their missionary’s @missionary.org account. While this doesn’t allow for auto syncing, it will allow your missionary to manually upload their photos to your album.

Unfortunately, church protections on missionary smartphones don’t function properly if we allow missionaries to add Gmail accounts to their smartphones.

[emilybaileys]

That is a great idea - thank you! She has had companions who have been allowed to purchase more space so we were confused about that. Thank you so much for clarifying that for us!
We will definitely start using a shared folder specifically for that purpose. Have a great weekend and Sabbath tomorrow!

[richielloydbrown]

Glad I could help. Yes, sorry for the confusion. We only communicated the change to missionaries who had subscription to storage already. Happy sabbath to you as well!

[jdmmcd@gmail.com]

Do this on the Missionary Google Account:
1. Log into the missionary.org gmail account for your missionary.
2. Navigate to Google Photos.
3. Click the "Gear" (Settings) icon in the upper right hand corner
4. Click "Partner Sharing" and add another Google Account to share with. I recommend using the missionaries personal account to share with so they have access to it when they return. You could set up a new Google Account strictly for mission stuff. It needs to be a google account to share.
5. Share "All photos" and "Locations" with the new Google Account.
6. Photos that are uploaded to the missionary Google Photos account will show in the new Google Photo account under the "Sharing" tab on the left on the main Google Photos screen. Click the New Account shown.

Do this on the New Google Account:
7. Log in to new Google Account, Navigate to Google Photos
8. On the left panel click "Sharing" tab and click on the shared account in the middle of the screen to view the shared photos
9. On the upper right , just above the pictures, turn on "Auto Save". You can automatically save certain photos to the new Google Photos. The photos you save won't count against your storage, as long as the sharing partner (missionary account) continues to share them with you through Partner Sharing. Once they are shared with you through this setup then the photos can be deleted from the missionary account to free up space. The pictures that were shared with you will still remain on the new account and will count towards the new Google account storage.
10. I would test it with one or two pictures first to see if they remain before deleting all the photos.
11. You can now upgrade your Google Storage plan to accommodate all the pictures and videos coming your way.

I hope this helps. I wish I could just screen record this and upload but until I can I hope this helps. You can export all data from the missionary Google Account through Google TakeOut but the files are a mess when doing so and metadata on the pictures can get lost. This is the best work around that I know about.

[dhansen007]

Glad I could help. Yes, sorry for the confusion. We only communicated the change to missionaries who had subscription to storage already. Happy sabbath to you as well!

Richard - how much storage do our missionaries get? in looking at what my son has now he has 40 GBs in his Drive and 100 TBs in his photos drive. i question that last one but it's what it shows. He too bounced up against the storage - i shared his account with my personal google Drive and have saved all his photos as well as downloaded them to my pc and then uploaded them to OneDrive. I've now deleted everything from his photo drive but it still says he's out of storage. is it a timing/sync thing? I guess i'll just watch it to see when/if his storage opens back up again.

[jdmmcd@gmail.com]

Emails count towards his total storage use too. If he has emails with lots of pictures it will eat up the storage fast too. If your son has emails he wants to keep he should forward those to another account as well.

[sarahpmerrill]

My daughter's account also shows that she is out of storage. Actually it shows that she has used 1,627TB out of 100TB. Hmm...does not sound too accurate. Anyway, I've downloaded most of of her pictures. In the Manage Storage section is says she has about 4.2GB of space used but still tells her she is out of storage and not able to add anything else. How do I go about freeing up space? I've downloaded most of her pictures, she should have space. I've also emptied the Trash folder. Is the space allocation working properly on these missionary.org accounts?