Backup Your iGoogle Home Page Before Adding New Gadgets

More often than not, adding a new gadget to your iGoogle home page or adding a new theme and changing the layout usually causes no problems. But when it comes to technology, sooner or later something will go wrong and your forced to start over again and re-create your home page.

Unless you made a backup.

Fortunately you can now backup up all your iGoogle settings that includes widgets, themes, and layout with one click and restore everything as they were from the previous backup. Even if you accidentally deleted a tab.

Two options exist for backup.

The first is the capability to backup your iGoogle page on Google's servers. To do this just click on My Account link in the upper right corner of your iGoogle home page.

Then click on Settings next to iGoogle under My Products…

…and scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see the Troubleshooting and Export / Import section.

By clicking on the Backup button you will backup all your iGoogle settings onto Google's server. When you need to recover your settings from the saved backup just click the Restore Now button.

Any changes made since the previous backup will be lost and the settings save from the backup will be used. Make sure you understand this, and backup your settings before making any changes (adding gadgets, feeds, themes, etc) when necessary.

Remember, by using Google servers to save your backup, you are trusting Google that nothing will happen to that backup. If you are uncomfortable with this approach, I highly recommend using the Export /Import feature.

When using Export, you will save all settings as an XML file to your Computer. To save settings using the Export feature, just click on the Export button, as shown in the above screen shot (you can also preview the file as well) and download it to any folder.

If you need to restore your settings, just click on the Browse button, locate the iGoogle-settings.xml (unless you named it something else) and click on Upload.

Simple!

Another advantage to using Import / Export for backups, you can modify the XML file (if you are familiar with the process) with a text editor or upload the file to a different Google account.

Now, you never have to worry if something goes wrong with gadgets or if you deleted a tab by mistake, Just restore it and your quickly back in business.