Do you still have an Orkut account? The social network was not a huge success globally, but became popular in India and Brazil, where communities were once very active, although most people have since moved on to Facebook and other networks. Google has now announced that it will be shutting down Orkut, and if you want to keep any images or messages from Orkut, you’ll need to save them elsewhere.
(See also: Google shuts down Orkut social network)
If you’re still an active user, or you have some data you’d like to download, there are some easy ways to do it. Before you begin, please note that you cannot download information from other people’s accounts. Google only allows you to download data from your Orkut account. This also means you won’t be able to download scraps or recommendations you’ve sent to other people. You can only download scraps and testimonials you have received and their comments.
Saving images from Orkut is especially easy because you can easily transfer them to a Google+ account. This method will stop working after September 30, 2014. Exporting to Google+ is easy – just follow these steps:
1) Go to Google+ and log in to your account.
2) Now open the album export page of Orkut.
3) Click to select each album to export or select “Select All”.
4) Click “Import Selected Content”. This will transfer your photos to Google+. All these photos are visible only to you. You must change their privacy settings to make them visible to others.
If you want to save pictures and scraps to your computer, you can use Google Takeout. This service allows you to download all your Orkut account data into a zip file. The file will contain HTML files and photos. Google says you can download your profile, received scraps, received recommendations, events and photos from Orkut. Prior to September 2016, you could use Google Takeout to download your Orkut data. Here’s how to download Orkut data:
1) Go to Google Takeout and log in (if you are not already logged in).
2) Click Select Service and select Orkut.
3) Click “Create Archive” and wait until the archive is ready. If you wish, you can leave this page and receive an email when the archive is ready.
4) When the archive is ready, click Download. Google says there’s no limit to the number of times you can download Orkut information.
Are you still an active Orkut user? What do you use it for? Please tell us in the comments. For more tutorials, head to our how-to section.