Removing files from Google
What removing does
You can take the files a campaign made in your Google Drive down from Google: one file, a set you choose, or every file of the campaign. Each Google Doc, Sheet, deck, PDF, image and shortcut you remove is unpublished, has its link sharing removed and is moved to Drive’s bin, and then we check it. The one exception is a file that something outside the campaign still uses: that file is left as it is (see “If some files could not be removed”). Most of the time you will want one file or a few: removing them leaves the campaign running. Withdrawing a whole campaign is the rarer choice: it takes down everything it recorded in Drive and stops the campaign for good. Only Google Drive files are removed. Blogger posts, Calendar events, YouTube videos, Business Profile posts and cloud pages are not. See “What is not removed” below.
Who can do it
Anyone who can sign in to the account and open the campaign. It still works after your trial has ended, when the account is read-only, because taking your own files down creates nothing new. It does not work while an admin is signed in as you. Removing files has to be your own decision.
Removing one file
1. Open the campaign and go to Activity, then the table. 2. Press “Remove from Google” at the end of the file’s row. Only Drive files the campaign made have it. 3. Read the short confirm: it says what will happen, and that it cannot be undone from here. Press “Remove from Google”. The campaign keeps running. It never shares, repairs or replaces that file again, and new files it makes will not link to it. Shortcuts the campaign made to the file come down with it, and posts still queued for your Business Profile or LinkedIn that link to it are cancelled.
Removing a set of files
1. Open the campaign and press “Withdraw from Google”, then “Choose files…” (or, in the Activity table, “Choose files to remove…”). 2. Tick the files, or choose them by when they were made (between two days, both included), by kind (Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, images, shortcuts, other files) or by subject (every word you type must be a whole word of the file’s title, so “pan” does not choose “Expansion tank guide”; type at least one word). Ticks and filters together take the ticked files that match. 3. Press “Remove … ticked” or “Remove all that match”. The preview shows how many files you chose, how many of each kind, the Google accounts that made them, the shortcuts the campaign made to them (which come down too, apart from any made by a Google account that is not connected, which stay until it is), queued posts that link to them (which are cancelled), any that were left out because they are already removed, already being removed, or are not Drive files, any that something outside the campaign still uses (which are left as they are), and any page that stays up and links to one of them as a source (its link will then open a file in Drive’s bin). 4. Above 20 files, type the number of files to confirm. Then press the red button. The files chosen are exactly those the preview showed: if the choice has changed since (a file was removed elsewhere, a new one matches, or the campaign made a new shortcut to one), you are shown the new preview to confirm instead. Shortcuts the campaign made to them, including older ones we find in Drive, come down with them. The campaign keeps running and goes on making new files. If you remove every Sheet it has, its next run starts a new data sheet. Progress shows on the campaign page under “Files removed from Google”. You can remove more files later; a file you have already removed is never offered again.
Withdrawing a whole campaign
1. Open the campaign and press “Withdraw from Google”, then “Whole campaign…”. 2. Read the preview. It counts the files by kind and by the Google account that made them, marks any account that is not connected, lists what will not be removed, and names any file something outside the campaign still uses and any page that stays up and links to a file being removed. 3. Say why, if you want to. The reason is kept with the withdrawal. 4. Type the campaign’s name exactly as it is shown, then press the red “Withdraw from Google” button. The campaign shows “Withdrawing”. It cannot be started, restarted or edited, and nothing new is started for it. If it was in the middle of a run, the run stops before the next kind of thing it would make; the Drive files it had already made are removed with the rest, and anything of another kind it had made is not. It finishes when every file has been removed or listed as not removed and an hour has passed with no activity on the campaign, so that a file made in the last moments before you pressed the button is on the list. It then shows “Withdrawn” and is kept as a record that never runs again - off the Campaigns list unless you press “Show withdrawn” - and it cannot be deleted, because it is the only list of the files it made. If the campaign records more files after the withdrawal has finished, it opens again by itself, removes them the same way, and tells you again.
What happens to each file
Every file goes through the same steps, in this order, except a file that something outside the campaign still uses, which is left as it is: 1. A Google Doc, Sheet or deck that was published to the web is unpublished, and so is every published version of it. 2. Link sharing set on the file is removed, so “anyone with the link” stops working. If you shared a file with named people yourself, that sharing is left alone, so they can still open the file until Drive empties its bin. 3. The file is moved to Drive’s bin. 4. We check. The file has to be in the bin, unpublished and with no link sharing of its own before it counts as removed (a folder it sits in may still be shared: see “Folders”). A file we cannot confirm is tried again on the next pass. If Google will still not confirm a file is down after a day, it is listed as not removed with that as the reason, and you can try it again. PDFs, images and shortcuts have no published version, so they go through steps 2 to 4. Comments we left on a file go with it. A file that Google says is already gone counts as removed.
Folders
The campaign’s own Drive folders are shared with “anyone with the link”, and a file inside a shared folder can be opened through the folder. Folders are never moved to the bin: that would bin everything in them. When you remove one file or a set, the folder is left shared, because the campaign keeps running and its other files depend on that link. A file that sits in a folder that is still shared is removed like any other: it is unpublished, loses its own link sharing and is moved to the bin, and once we have checked it is in the bin it counts as removed. Nothing is deleted outright. When you withdraw a whole campaign, the folders it made lose their link sharing before it finishes, and the files in them are checked as removed. A file you had already removed on its own is not worked again, but its folder still loses its link sharing. The exception is a folder that a file still in use outside the campaign sits in or takes its link from: it stays shared while that file is. A public folder the campaign did not make is not changed: it is named, and a file in it is removed like any other.
What is not removed
The whole-campaign preview counts these and names them, so you know they are still out there: - Blogger posts - Calendar events - YouTube videos and YouTube comments - Business Profile posts, events and photos - Cloud pages - Google Sites pages, Google Photos uploads, hub pages and Maps embeds - Drive folders, which are never moved to the bin Some things have no record we can act on, so they stay where they are, and the whole-campaign preview names them: images inside Slides decks and Business Profile posts, and the Google Docs copies we file of pages published to your own site; and, when the campaign has them, its keyword-cluster documents (with their number) and its Entity Hub document. When you choose files, the preview leaves out anything that is not a Drive file it can remove - posts, events, videos, comments and pings - and says so. Pages on your own site and posts on other sites are not touched. We do not edit anything that linked to a removed file - a hub document or another file of the campaign that links to it keeps the link, which then points at a file in Drive’s bin; the preview names the pages that do. And removing a file cannot take back a copy that a search engine or an AI engine has already read.
While it runs
Removing files takes a while. Google limits how fast files can be changed, and when it asks us to slow down we wait and carry on. The campaign page shows how many files are removed and when we will work on them next (for a whole campaign, also when we last did). You can leave the page: the work carries on without it, and you get a notification when it has finished. While chosen files are being removed, every Google account of that campaign - the ones that made the files and the campaign’s own - cannot be disconnected or deleted, and neither the campaign nor the project of its domain can be deleted: you can delete the project once the removal has finished. While a whole campaign is being withdrawn, a Google account that made a file still to be taken down cannot be disconnected or deleted, and the campaign itself is kept for good.
If some files could not be removed
A file can fail to come down, and the campaign page says why for each one. One reason is that the Google account that made it is not connected: we cannot take a file down without the account that made it. If Google no longer accepts an account’s sign-in, the files it made fail in the same way. Another is that Google refused a step, or will not say the file is down, so it is listed as not removed and trying again is how to find out. A file that something outside the campaign still uses - a page published from it, a draft waiting for your review, or a page that links to it - is left as it is and listed as not removed, with what uses it and what would release it: discarding that draft, or withdrawing that other campaign from Google too, then trying the failed ones again. Where nothing in the app can release it, its row says so. If the reason is a disconnected account, connect it again under Connections → Google. Then press “Try the failed ones again” on that removal. A failed file is left alone until you try again. Once the whole campaign is being withdrawn, or has been, use “Try the failed ones again” on the campaign’s withdrawal instead: it takes those files over.
What stays afterwards
Evidence that rests on a removed file is withdrawn too, so nothing new is written from it. Removing files cannot be undone from the app. Drive keeps what is in its bin for 30 days and then empties it. A file you restore from the bin before then comes back private: its link sharing is not put back, and the campaign does not start using it again. The exception is a file that was left in a folder that is still shared: restored, it goes back into that folder, and anyone with the folder’s link can open it again. To bring a withdrawn campaign back, make a new campaign.
Read the preview first. It shows what will come down and what will not, and once you confirm it cannot be undone from the app.