Best practices for management of missionary pics/emails during mission

The recent kerfuffle with the missionary Google Drive access, got me to wondering if there's any official best-practices for missionaries regarding handling their pictures and other Google docs while serving their missions? I know there's some unofficial pointers in the Forum like the following:
what we recommend missionary families do...
linking a missionary google account...

I know this may have been discussed in other threads, but I don't remember seeing anything that states whether all missionaries are receiving guidance like this. If most missionaries were actively downloading (or somehow syncing) their pics and such during their missions, there likely wouldn't be as big of a concern if there's access outages at some point, since most/all of their stuff would already be available "back home". Perhaps the Church doesn't want to push this onto the missionaries, to help them focus less on those aspects and more on their callings. But then a few seem to get home and not transfer everything in the required timeframe, and then lose important mission memories. We don't have any missionaries currently serving from our unit, so I'm unaware of what type of instructions they may or may not receive about this.

I am a current missionary, so perhaps I can shed some light on the matter. There are articles available on ServiceNow that instruct missionaries how to back up their data, but it usually only talks about Google Photos and MicroSD cards (Along with Google Takeout and POP for when you return home.) And I'm not sure how many other missionaries actually read those. The unofficial methods are good, though I don't have storage issues so I don't use them.

What I personally do is make the settings save all my photos and files to my MicroSD card instead of internal storage, so all I have to do when I get home is take it out, put it in my computer, and copy it to Dropbox. I also back up to Google Photos, and I have a USB-C flash drive that I could also back up to if needed.

One of the big things that gets misunderstood is that "sharing" access to a photo or a folder of photos doesn't back up the photos to the other account. The original account is still the "owner" of the photos, so if the original account is deleted, amen to the photos thereof. The photos need to be copied out of Google Drive to somewhere else, otherwise they remain a part of the account that will eventually be deleted.

I'm putting in a shameless plug for this: https://universe.byu.edu/life/save-your ... d-forever

For emails, you can use POP3 at the end of your mission but in many cases the missionary mail site doesn't give you the right password to enable it until you're released. You can download just your missionary gmails anytime during a mission here https://takeout.google.com/settings/tak ... stom/gmail

For pictures, the options are:
A) use a microSD card. If you want extra data resilience, you can clone the card at intervals during a mission and mail the clone home.
B) use Google Photos, set quality to Storage Saver, and enable Partner Sharing to a personal gmail account with a storage subscription and enable autosave. Any pictures/videos deleted from the missionary Photos would remain on the partner's account.

reach out here for help: https://missionary.pro/

@Mods -- I suggest considering putting the previous post as a separate pinned thread somewhere. I read the article, and skimmed (very briefly) through the accompanying "Save Your Mission Memories Before They Expire: A Guide" doc. That's the most complete and concise explanation I've seen, of one of the most-often asked questions here in the Forum. Perhaps there's other details listed inside the myriad of threads we have about this topic, which aren't listed in that Guide, but I expect he's got pretty much everything covered. And... he's offering himself up as a personal help desk for RM's with questions.

Perhaps it's not kosher to pin a thread that's pointing to somebody's personal web pages outside of the Tech Forum, you guys will know about that. But there's an awful lot of really-helpful info in that Guide, and he really seems to have good understanding of the process, having worked in the MIssionary Department after his mission.

Brian, thanks for the glowing recommendation! I'm glad you thought the guide was complete and concise.

Unfortunately, I got a pm from the admins that even though the guide answers most questions about missionary data recovery, I'm no longer supposed to post links to the website here because of the forum code of conduct. So I don't think it'll get pinned, but the Daily Universe article should still be okay to share here since it's a publication of a church-owned school

Keeping original mission pictures? I was here reading this same forum 18 mo ago when my son left on his mission. I was hoping some new enlightenment would be here for me. This has been so frustrating with no good solutions given. Missionaries are absolutely not given enough photo storage. Many periodically download to micro SD cards. This is often not super reliable. Often downgrading (slightly) the quality of the images and you’ll often find some images lost in the transfer. Google Takeout is only providing links to the actual pictures. Let me repeat that. Google Takeout transfers only links to the actual pictures. After weeks of using Takeout I found that the hard way. Lot’s of time waisted. Even downloading lots of photos in a zip file then to en external drive causes a slight lowering of image quality. If that was the best solution I would still accept it as a solution. But that’s difficult for missionaries to do without help. Also to add extra storage to the missionary google account is not accepted as the missionary is not the admin. The church account is. This is kind of ridiculous that there has not been adequate importance put on retaining so many precious memories and pictures. All the solutions have just taken me back to the the beginning. Somebody please talk to the missionary department. Someone with good tech knowledge, and please try to find a solution to so much frustration.

Agreed that it's disappointing that a better official solution is not available. There are people working on supporting missionaries independently, the BYU Daily Universe did an article on a student doing this back in October. It has instructions to do a Partner Share with auto-save that can solve issues of backup and running out of storage.

Takeout should download the cloud files, but you might be confusing links with either JSON files or folders/files not owned by the missionary. If your missionary is still out, you'd need to do the Takeout from their missionary account directly. If they shared an album with you and you did Takeout from your account, it would show as links.

Add to this issue that if they uploaded with Storage Saver and not Original Quality then you'll always get a drop in quality.

For microSD cards, I've found them to be reliable if you're using a name brand (SanDisk, Samsung, Lexar) and have a U3 or Endurance rated card.

julietluper wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 2:39 pm..... Somebody please talk to the missionary department. Someone with good tech knowledge, and please try to find a solution to so much frustration.

FYI, the Tech Forum is comprised primarily of regular church members like yourself, with no special "insider" connections. Occasionally a Church employee will participate, but they're not the "decision makers" and don't have any real ability to prioritize change requests.

The appropriate method for requesting "somebody do something" is to use the Feedback tool, available at the bottom of most Church webpages or inside Church apps. This will get your request into the Church's system for processing. The unfortunate reality is that as outsiders we don't have insight into whether the Church has any plans to effect change regarding this issue, or any potential timelines. I personally continue to be a bit surprised that the Church doesn't have a more detailed way of helping missionaries (those just receiving their calls, those serving, and those returning home) understand exactly how to manage their digital mission memories. It's really sad to know there are many RM's who unknowingly lose access and cannot get it back.

Thanks Brian.

As for submitting feedback, there is a dedicated feedback tool accessible only to missionaries at missionarysupport.churchofjesuschrist.org

missionarypro1 wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 3:15 pm For microSD cards, I've found them to be reliable if you're using a name brand (SanDisk, Samsung, Lexar) and have a U3 or Endurance rated card.

I believe that the claim being made wasn't that SD cards are unreliable, but that downloading from Google (or wherever they are stored) is unreliable.

julietluper wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 2:39 pm This has been so frustrating with no good solutions given.

Why not just have your missionary configure his device to save the images directly to the microSD card instead of to some service outside of his control? This seems like a "good solution" to me. This is exactly what was mentioned by an actual missionary previously:

Cmanrogers wrote: Mon Dec 04, 2023 8:03 pm What I personally do is make the settings save all my photos and files to my MicroSD card instead of internal storage, so all I have to do when I get home is take it out, put it in my computer, and copy it to Dropbox. I also back up to Google Photos, and I have a USB-C flash drive that I could also back up to if needed.

Now, saving directly to the microSD is not risk free... if he loses his device, and no backups of the microSD has been made, then he'll lose everything, so plan accordingly. But I offer the many frustrated posts in these forums about missionaries losing photos as evidence that neither is using "cloud" as storage for mission memories risk free.

ambldsorg wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 3:27 pm

Why not just have your missionary configure his device to save the images directly to the microSD card instead of to some service outside of his control? This seems like a "good solution" to me.

Q: Why not just have your missionary configure his device to save the images directly to the microSD card?

A: There's a few reasons
1. Not all missionary smartphones support internal microSD cards, so it can't be a standard solution. Samsung S-series phones from 2021 to present don't have a microSD slot. Missionaries that started in July 2023 to now were all given Samsung A2x phones that do support microSD, so it could become a standard solution soon.
2. MicroSD cards will only auto-save pictures and videos taken by Camera; other apps like Chrome downloads, Google Photos, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp all save their items to Internal Storage. As a missionary technology specialist for over 3 years, I'd estimate that less than 25% of missionaries have the intuition, awareness, and skill to know that they need to move those in the My Files or Gallery apps.
3. A majority of Americans use iPhones, which do not support microSD cards or a traditional user-accessible filesystem, so using a microSD card as internal removable storage on a phone is foreign and unintuitive for most users.
4. MicroSD cards must be removed from the phone before factory resetting the phone to remove Church Protections (maas) at the end of their missions. If the microSD card is left inside, then all its data is wiped during the reset. I've met several dozen RMs that fell victim to this.
5. Making regular backups to a redundant USB drive or another microSD card to protect against phone theft is hard. The Samsung Smart Switch app is blocked on missionary devices, which would normally offer an intuitive UI to accomplish this and merge changes. Since it's unavailable, a missionary would either end up with multiple backups with duplicate data, or overwrite the previous backup.
6. Most importantly, there are some data types that cannot be saved to a microSD card from a missionary phone. Specifically, Google Keep Notes and Gmail messages can't be downloaded en masse. Keep would have to be copy/pasted to a Google Doc individually then downloaded as docx. Gmail messages would have to be printed as individual pdfs or individually forwarded to a personal email. Google Drive files can be downloaded individually. On a desktop, a missionary could use Takeout (blocked on missionary devices) for all of these.

ambldsorg wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 3:14 pm

I believe that the claim being made wasn't that SD cards are unreliable, but that downloading from Google (or wherever they are stored) is unreliable.

Got it. In that case, I'm understanding that julietluper has a missionary son who is currently out, and they're trying to save the son's pictures to a microSD card.
My experience has been that the following are reliable methods to save missionary photos and videos
-using a microSD card in the mission phone
-dumping the entire contents accessible in My Files to a USB drive or microSD card (usually at the end of a mission)
-setting up Google Photos Partner Share with auto-save enabled
-using Google Takeout from the missionary's account. Using it from another account that is shared on Drive Folders or unsaved Photos Albums with the missionary will yield the result julietluper is describing where Takeout only gives you links, not the original files

Further reading: https://universe.byu.edu/life/save-your ... ed-forever

RyanZim wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 5:48 pm Gmail messages would have to be printed as individual pdfs or individually forwarded to a personal email.

Exporting as PDF or forwarding is inefficient and lossy (however, I won't deny that having a printed hard copy might actually be of value). It's possible to enable IMAP on the missionary.org email account after the mission which allows one to copy the entire body of email messages (en masse) without loss into a new account. I believe these are helpful resources to those who are willing to expend a little effort:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/th ... -and-gmail
https://support.google.com/a/answer/105694?hl=en

I have no pretentions that what I suggest should become "the standard", however, I do hope that it remains an option to those who can utilize it. And given that different people have different needs, I think it's wise to discuss options and let the "emptor" decide which is best.

ambldsorg wrote: [/url]42354143 user_id=715318]

RyanZim wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 5:48 pm Gmail messages would have to be printed as individual pdfs or individually forwarded to a personal email.

Exporting as PDF or forwarding is inefficient and lossy. It's possible to enable IMAP on the missionary.org email account after the mission which allows one to copy the entire body of email messages without loss into a new account. I believe these are helpful resources to those who are willing to expend a little effort:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/th ... -and-gmail
https://support.google.com/a/answer/105694?hl=en

I have no pretentions that what I suggest should become "the standard", however, I do hope that it remains an option to those who can utilize it. And given that different people have different needs, I think it's wise to discuss options and let the "emptor" decide which is best.

Agreed that this is a valid method of saving missionary emails (I use Thunderbird and love it), though it does require access to a personal computer (not true of all RMs, especially internationally), and for best results it should stay on and connected to the internet for a couple weeks. This is since Gmail has limits on how many messages a third-party IMAP client like Thunderbird can receive in a rolling 24-hr period, which is currently around 150 messages or 1250 MB, whichever comes first. The average missionary I've assisted has about 3,000 messages equaling around 7 GB, so that would take 20 days with the message quota being the governing limit. The one benefit of Thunderbird is that it can use oauth for sign-in instead of the unique steps in the official guide. If you want a complete backup at full quality just for a local archive, Takeout is best which can be viewed in Thunderbird. https://takeout.google.com/settings/tak ... stom/gmail

The official missionary dept guidance can be found below (the site is accessible only to current or recently returned missionaries) that use an App Password (since missionary accounts use the Church's oauth) that becomes available after release to authenticate a POP3 connection to transfer to a personal Gmail. I've observed this method to transfer about 30 messages per minute with no rolling ceiling since it's between Gmail servers. However, this process is intimidating to most RMs and some steps fail if certain browser conditions are met, making it have the lowest self-serve success rate I've observed among the four main services (Drive, Gmail, Photos, Keep). This also has the benefit that the transfer happens in the cloud, so an individual with no personal computer could do this at a public desktop in a library or church and then leave it.
https://servicenow.churchofjesuschrist. ... =KB0105429