Transferring photos to laptop

[Sue]

Hoping someone can help!

I have an Android phone.

Last time I tried to transfer photos from my phone to my laptop, I somehow ended up transferring zillions of photos from my laptop to my phone, which are still there, going back to the mists of time. They are also still on my laptop. I think!

I've got a new phone, and before I transfer everything from the old phone to the new phone ( they are both Moto Gs and I can do it via one app and holding one phone over the other) I want to move all the photos off my old phone to my laptop.

Can anyone tell me how I can do this without it all synching again?

I've googled but can't find the answer :(

[fishbiscuits]

I think if you just connect with a USB cable, and when prompted select "open for browsing" or similar. Then you can view all the photos on your phone and just drag and drop them to your PC hard drive.

Saying that, a better way of doing it is just to configure your phone(s) to backup to cloud (e.g. Google Drive), then you can access your photos from anywhere.

[RichH]

Pretty much as described above, but the specific steps (if you don't receive any automatic prompts) are:

1. Plug in USB cable

2. Go to "Settings"

3. Scroll down to "Connected devices"

4. Select "USB"

5. Select "Transfer files"

Now, on your laptop, you'll find a "Moto G" device/drive where you can select and copy your photos and paste them to your laptop drive.

[Sue]

Thanks both, but last time I connected with a USB cable but nevertheless they seemed to automatically synch.

I think I've got too many to back up to cloud, plus presumably then you can only access them if you have an internet connection?

As you can see I'm not a techie :))

[ed_pete]

I'd do via Google Photos, storage (up to a fairly high resolution) is unlimited

1. Create a gmail account if you don't already have one

2. Download the Google photos app to your phone

3. Let the app sync the photos on your phone to the cloud

4. Login to your google account on your laptop and select the pictures you want to download

Note when you download multiple pictures they are combined into a zip file that you'll need to unzip.

[Sue]

What I stupidly don't understand is, if they are saved on my phone but are synched by Google, if I delete them from my phone does that mean they are deleted everywhere else as well?

Because I'm also worried that I will somehow lose all my photos.

[RichH]

Sue Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ...last time I connected with a USB

> cable but nevertheless they seemed to

> automatically synch.

>

Ah, sorry, I now see your point about not wanting to automatically synch the whole lot! My MotoG phone doesn't synch automatically so I guess it might be something you set up in the past. If your laptop is Windows 10 (and possibly Windows 7) you could try looking at the following (on the laptop, not the phone):

1. Go to "Settings"

2. Phone

Is your phone listed in "Your phone"? If so, you might want to remove it.

Alternatively:

1. Go to "Settings"

2. Select "System"

3. Select "Shared Experiences"

4. Turn off "Share accross devices"

Lastly, on Windows 7 and 10 have a look at the "Autoplay" settings:

1. Open Windows Control Panel

2. Search Control Panel for "autoplay"

3. Look for removable/phone devices that have automatic actions enabled and either reset them or change them as appropriate eg. to "Take no action".

[Sue]

Thanks RichH.

I have Windows 10. I've just looked, and my phone isn't listed under "your phone".

The other option I have is to find out if there's any way I can adjust the Moto Migrate app so that it doesn't transfer the photos. I'll have to do a bit more googling!

I wouldn't mind if the photos stayed on my old phone pro tem, I just don't want them on the new one.

The problem is, last time I tried to transfer photos from my phone to my laptop, I ended up with photos on my phone going back to 2002 GRRRRRRRR.

[Sue]

I've just done a live chat with Moto. The person was very helpful.

Though embarrassingly, I discovered that my existing phone is a G4 Plus not a G6 Plus :)) Maybe I've had it longer than I thought :))

Anyway, she has told me to do what I think people have told me to do on here, ie connect the phone to the laptop via USB, then press on MTP/file transfer or transfer files. Then move the photos from the phone.

She says this won't sync via google. It had better not!!!!!

ETA: Sadly there is no option with Moto Migrate not to transfer the photos, so I have to get them off the old phone first.

[Sue]

Ah. "Share across devices" is on. I'll turn it off pro tem.

But I'm not sure how that may affect things if I then turn it back on. I want to share things like emails, Facebook and Twitter, how would that work?

Had a look, and although it's turned on, it says "You haven't given access to any apps or services yet. Once you do, they'll show up here". So presumably that can't be affecting anything.

OK, I've gone into Autoplay, which I didn't even know existed, and I've set the phone to import photos and videos to photos as a default (rather than onedrive or dropbox). So HOPEFULLY that should sort it.

Even I'm getting bored with this now :)) :)) :))

Thanks very much again all, fingers crossed! I'm having a rest before I try it!

[ed_pete]

Google Photos is a one-way sync, i.e. if you sync your phone photo's with Google Photo's then delete them from your phone it won't delete them from the cloud. You can still view them using the Google Photo's app. However once you've downloaded them to your laptop them it doesn't matter whether they are deleted from the cloud or not if your sole objective was to move them to your laptop.

[Sue]

Yes. Everything on my laptop is backed up by Carbonite.

I just found that some series of photos on my phone had three or four identical copies of each :(

This must have been due to copying backwards and forwards at various times in the past I suppose, without actually transferring them :(

[Sue]

Oh great.

Well it got as far as "Looking for new photos and videos" appearing on my laptop. So far so good.

Then, it says 7463 !!!!!!!!! items found so far. WTF.

My mobile appears to have photos on it going back to 2001. I didn't even have a phone with a camera then.

And now the laptop page is just sitting there. It doesn't appear to be doing anything at all. The 7463 number is not moving, and no photos are disappearing from my phone.

I've already cancelled it and started again once. I'm giving up for the night :(

ETA: Oh great. I just noticed some photos moving across the top of the screen rather quickly saying "view/keep". Surely it's not going to show me over 7,000 photos one by one?? Is that how this works?

[vanihe]

I carry the photo using a USB cable from the Android smartphone to the HP computer. There were no problems

[Sue]

I have just found out that there is a fairly recent Google glitch which duplicates photos.

Which explains why I have so many.

vanihe, I was using a USB cable when I had problems. I am going to try again later today, have had more pressing things to do since I last tried ...... :)