Deleting Old Photos From A Blogger Photo Album/Picasa/Google Album Archive

If you have ever tried deleting photos from an old Blogger blog, you may have discovered that it can be a truly frustrating experience. To begin with, deleting the posts that the photos were in will not delete the photos. You must remove the photos separately from Google's data servers. There is no button on Blogger to delete the photos. Instead, Google instructs that the following procedure be followed:

First, visit Google Album Archive.

Go to the folder "Photos from Blogger."

Go to the blog name to view all the pictures uploaded to that particular blog.

Open the photo or album you want to delete.

Click on More options and then Delete photo or Delete album option.

Somewhat tedious but simple, right? Not in my case or that of others.

If there is no "Photos from Blogger" folder or the blog name is missing or no photo album or the photos you want to delete are not listed in the archive, what should you do?

Once I realized that the procedure above didn't work, I began researching the topic of deleting photos from Google and discovered that Google has a glitch. This glitch prevents photo albums from showing up in some Google Album Archives. The photos are still on Google. You can see them in your blog posts and they will show up in your browser if you know the photo's exact url. You just cannot delete them.

For example, take a look at the following comment/request for assistance from another Blogger publisher...

And the reply from a Google Expert User on this issue...

If you cannot read the Google Expert's reply, here it is:

"This seems to be a bug affecting some pre-Picasaweb blog posts. Your image is not hosted in any of the (currently) normal expected ways.

 

The issue has come up before and NOT (emphasis mine) been addressed by Google, but in one case there was an offer to delete images."

 

My blog definitely falls into this category. I began blogging in 2005 and none of the images I posted from 17-10 years back are visible in the Google Album Archive. They are still online though and that is a potential problem.

While I created some of the photos, others were licensed; however, I've gone through 3 hard drive crashes over the last 17 years and lost a lot of data including licensing info, which can cause trouble if someone asks for proof of your licenses. Frankly, I created my blog solely as a pro-bono, feel-good effort to highlight the advantages of bicycling, not for profit, so I was attracted to Blogger's free blog hosting. Nevertheless,when there is a problem, the issue with free is little to no support and that's where I am now.

 

I'm hoping that a Google expert will see this post and respond with a solution. I spent untold hours researching many news stories before creating and publishing hundreds of blog posts but have no intention for letting this become a potential problem for my heirs. Google is eternal, ya'll.