1381 - How to backup and recover Google Contacts

Modified on Tue, 5 Aug at 1:10 PM

If you're looking for a backup solution for Google Workspace (GWS), formerly known as G Suite (gsuite), you can find more information on our website, or start a free trial here.

Introduction

Backup and recovery of Google Contacts forms part of our Google Workspace service offering.

Note:

To use the service, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Google super administrator for your tenant organisation.
Google recommends creating a new super admin email address for this that is not specific to a particular user. Read more here.
Important: If a Google Workspace user leaves your organisation, do not delete the user. Redstor has no way of restoring a deleted user's Contacts or Calendar. Gmail can be restored to a different account. If you withdraw the departing user's Google Workspace licence, even if you do not delete the user, Google is under no obligation to retain that user's data. The data may appear to remain present but can be removed by Google at any time as part of cleanup. Consider assigning an archive licence or exporting the data for alternative storage instead.

What is supported?

Redstor currently supports the following:

Backup of Contacts
Recovery back to Contacts (new folder)
Recovery using InstantData
Single item recovery

Guides

Use the guides below to manage your Google Contacts backups.

How to add a backup set

How to modify a backup set

How to configure the backup schedule for a backup set

How to recover a backup set

How to delete a backup set

How to change a backup set's name

How to add a backup set

1. On the RedApp home page, go to My Company or to the relevant customer company.

2. To add a new backup set, go to Google Workspace in the sidebar on the left.

3. Click Add at the top right.

4. Select Contacts and click Next.

5. On the permission card, click Next.

6. After logging into Google, you will see the following screen. Click on Get the Redstor app.

Note: If you are an existing customer, you will see a different screen, requiring to you update your permissions instead.

7. You will be taken to the Redstor Cloud Backup page on the Google Marketplace. Click on Domain Install.

8. Click Continue.

9. Agree to the terms and conditions and click Allow.

10. Click Done to exit the installation wizard.

As shown here, you can access the app at any time by going to the App Launcher at the top right of the screen. (Scroll down until you see Redstor Cloud Backup.)

11. Close the Google Marketplace tab in your browser to return to the RedApp. Our system will have picked up that permissions have been allowed and you will see a summary of your backup set.

When a new backup set is created, we include all users' contacts by default. To make changes to your backup set, go to Backup selection > Edit.

12. Select/deselect user(s) as needed, and click Save.

The Backup button will be enabled. Click to start your first backup.

You can customise which columns you see on the backup set home page by clicking on the columns icon..

You can also view an audit trail of key actions and which users performed them by clicking on the inspect icon at the top right of the page.

How to modify a backup set

1. On the home page for the relevant Contacts backup set, click on Backup selection > Edit.

2. Select/deselect users(s) as needed and click Save. Click Backup to start a backup immediately, or go back to leave the new selection for the next scheduled backup.

3. The new number of users selected will be shown under Backup selection on the backup set's home page.

How to configure the backup schedule for a backup set

1. On the home page for the relevant Contacts backup set, click on Backup Schedule > Edit.

2. You can retain the default of a single daily backup, or you can set your backups to only run on specific days (custom). In either case, use the drop-down menu to set the backup time. Set your preferences and click on the check mark.

How to recover a backup set

1. On the home page for the relevant Contacts backup set, locate the user whose contacts you want to recover. Click on the menu icon and select Recover.

You can also select multiple contacts and click Recover at the bottom of the page.

Note: If you need to recover multiple contacts, it is advised to recover them in bulk and not in sequence. It is not possible to queue a recovery while another recovery for the same backup set is in progress.

To recover a single item (contact), first click on the menu icon and select Open to expand the relevant user.

Then drill down and make your selection. Click Recover when you are ready.

You can also select a specific backup date to recover, and then select All to recover everything from that backup.

2. When recovering, you can choose between the following options:

New folder recovers the contacts to the label Redstor Restore on the user's Google Contacts page. The recovery timestamp will also be shown.

Note: The folder/s into which the contacts are restored, are based on the labels assigned to the contacts. If a contact has been assigned multiple labels, it will be restored to multiple folders. These are not duplicates and should not be deleted.
Recover using InstantData generates a shareable link that can be used to recover contacts manually. Each link and can only be used to initiate one restore. Use the Copy option to share a link to the InstantData application, or Download the application immediately.

Run the application on the machine where you want to recover the data. Select between Permanent and Temporary recovery, then simply drag and drop files from the application into your File Explorer to recover them.

To obtain the Google Contacts URL for a specific event, you can open the recovered file in a code editor.