Google Photos / missionary storage

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!!

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.

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

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.

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!

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!

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.

richielloydbrown wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 9:17 pm 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.

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.

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?

sarahpmerrill wrote: Mon Dec 04, 2023 9:27 am How do I go about freeing up space?

The Church is working with Google on the problem. At this point, there is nothing you can do except be patient.

My daughters missionary account photos says the exact same thing with 1677 TB of 100 TB used. She has only been using this account for 2 months and takes an average amount of photos.

Do we know any timeframe on when it will be resolved? It's been stuck for a week. (started on November 28)

cherisegraham wrote: Mon Dec 04, 2023 12:27 pm Do we know any timeframe on when it will be resolved? It's been stuck for a week. (started on November 28)

What is the status of this issue?

All my sons pictures have been moved to "trash" and will be deleted in 30 days because of this problem. He can't restore them because it says he's 1000 TB over his limit. Are we going to lose all of his pictures? Will this be resolved soon?

I need a help,I am currently serving D.R.C Mbuji-Mayi Mission.The mission office came for our phones so to re-install new Maas360 for us and after I Iogged into my account so to get my photos back,many photos couldn't backup and my account storage too is full.What can I do to get my pictures back please?

This is a current missionary wide issue, that the Church and Google are working on. The storage will soon be back to normal.

I'm so sorry for the confusion. We know this has been very disruptive for missionaries and their families, and we are doing everything possible to resolve it. I should have been more clear. Freeing up storage on your missionary's account, although a great thing to do normally, will not fix the problem. We are dealing with an issue affecting all accounts whether they use 0% or 100% of their individual storage amounts. The Church's vendor management office is working with Google to negotiate an increase in our organization's storage limits which will resolve things for all missionary users (who are below the 40 GB limit). Thanks for your patience and for your valiant attempts to fix this on your own. I'll provide an update early next week, if things aren't resolved sooner.

The issue with Google storage is finally resolved! Thank you, thank you for your patience! Missionaries should be able to use their photos and drive as normal.

Note: Some missionaries are above the 30GB storage limit on their account. We are temporarily accommodating those who were above the 30 GB limit to avoid further disruption to our missionaries. However, we will eventually be returning to the 30GB limit for all. This deadline will be sometime in the early part of next year - date TBA. In the meantime, please encourage your missionaries to verify they are below the 30GB limit, or to reduce to below that limit as quickly as possible.

This article has recommendations for freeing up storage (note: it is only accessible to full-time missionaries): https://servicenow.churchofjesuschrist. ... =KB0105389

Again, thanks for your sacrifices and your patience during this time!

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

michlewis wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2023 9:02 pm 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