Google Photos / missionary storage

[russellhltn]

Given that the account will be deleted shortly after the mission, it would be wise to consider the 30G a cache memory to give the missionary time to move the photos to their post-mission account/location.

Even on a fairly fast connection, it will take time to move 30G. So it's better to do it in stages rather than all at once.

[jdmmcd@gmail.com]

Folks don’t make this harder than it needs to be.
1. Add sufficient storage to your missionary’s personal Google account or create a personal one.

2. Log in to your missionary’s mission account (Google).

3. Navigate to Google Photos (Mission account) and create a shared album and share it with the personal account.

4. Move the loose photos to the shared album.

5. Log in to the personal account and see if you can see the photos.

6. When the missionary gets low on space copy the contents of the shared mission picture folder to a separate folder on the personal account. The photos won’t count against the personal account in the shared folder but as soon as you move the to another folder it’s starts counting against storage.

Things to consider.
A. Videos take up a lot of space. Consider uploading the videos to the personal Google account’s YouTube channel. Every Google account has one unless it’s turned off by an administrator.

B. Young men and women are selfie junkies. Delete multiple photos of the same pose.

C. SD cards are cheap as well as adapters for Android phones, which is the authorized phone.

D. Emails count towards the storage usage as well. If missionaries send emails with a lot of pictures then you could be wasting space if the email isn’t deleted.

E. Emails will be deleted after a missionary returns home as well. If the missionary wants to keep any emails then they better forward them or transfer them using a program like Mozilla Thunderbird. This program allows you to add multiple email accounts and you can drag emails between two accounts flawlessly. This is perhaps the best way to save those emails.

F. Amazon Prime members can back up unlimited full resolution photos for the price of membership. There is a limit on video storage though without upgrading.

G. If you maintain your missionary’s personal accounts then you can share the back up photo folder with Google Home or similar product to see a slide show of your missionary in real time.

Hope this helps. If you need help with any of this then let me know.

[Cmanrogers]

I agree with the content in post 22. I'd just like to add

In regards to #1, you can't buy more storage for the missionary account.

And in regards to D, my first advice to anyone who is struggling with storage is to start deleting weekly emails from other missionaries, especially those with pictures attached. Keep only the emails you may want to read in the future. Also, if you save to Google photos and then email those pictures, it's counted twice on your storage. If you save to Google photos and send a link to a shared album in your emails, it's only once because you're just linking to where it is in Google Photos.

And regarding E, you can POP those emails to a personal account once you're home (though Thunderbird may be easier.)

[russellhltn]

According to post #21 above, he should have 30G. However, I'd start moving photos sooner than later. We've had a few missionaries come here asking how to get their photos back now that they are off their mission.

[RyanZim]

In today's world 30GB is insufficient space for storing 18 mos to 2 years worth of photos. My daughter has been out just 8 months and is over that limit. (This is my fourth missionary so I am not a newbie!) Certainly the church has resources to provide more storage for these important memories and records our missionaries have. I have heard of missionaries losing their photos at the end of their missions because of not understanding the exit protocols. This required ongoing procedure to empty their accounts only complicates it further. It is tragic and preventable! Surely a more secure and simpler solution is available that will provide ample storage for our missionaries' memories.

To my understanding, this is a limitation of how the missionary.org Google account is set up as a nonprofit. This is advertised as costing $0/user, but the organization as a whole has a data cap. It used to possible to pay for more storage, but as of August 2022, Google made a change so all their nonprofit users no lonager had that option.

During the fluke last winter, some accounts uploaded more than 30GB, so afterwards those users' cap was set to 40GB so they could still function.

Sources: https://servicenow.churchofjesuschrist. ... =KB0105389
https://www.google.com/nonprofits/offer ... ce-pricing
See also https://promevo.com/blog/google-workspa ... ge-updates