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Documentation Index

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Most AutoBackupTool problems fall into a small set of categories: missing dependencies, authentication issues, encryption key mismatches, and Drive API configuration errors. Work through the relevant accordion below to diagnose and fix your issue.
Cause: One or more required dependencies are not installed in your Python environment.Fix: Install all dependencies from the project’s requirements.txt:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Verify the packages are present:
pip list
You should see pydrive2, cryptography, schedule, and python-dotenv in the output. If any are missing, re-run the install command.
Cause: mycreds.txt is missing, empty, or corrupted — or CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE in backup.env points to the wrong path.Fix:
  1. Delete mycreds.txt if it exists, then rerun the app: 
    python backup_gui.py
    The app will open a browser window to complete the OAuth flow and create a fresh mycreds.txt.
  2. Confirm that CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE in your backup.env points to the correct location of client_secrets.json: 
    CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE=client_secrets.json
    If client_secrets.json is in a different directory, update the path accordingly.
Cause: The ENCRYPTION_KEY in backup.env is incorrect, malformed, or missing.Fix:
  1. Open backup.env and confirm the key is set: 
    ENCRYPTION_KEY=YOUR_BASE64_KEY_HERE
  2. A valid Fernet key is a base64-encoded string approximately 44 characters long, with no spaces, quotes, or line breaks.
  3. If you need to generate a new key: 
    from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
print(Fernet.generate_key().decode())
Important: if you changed your ENCRYPTION_KEY after creating backups, you cannot decrypt those older backups with the new key. Each backup can only be decrypted with the exact key that was used to encrypt it.
Cause: The Google Drive API is not enabled for your project, the OAuth consent screen is misconfigured, or your quota is exceeded.Fix:
  1. Go to the Google Cloud Console and confirm the Google Drive API is enabled under APIs & Services > Library.
  2. Check APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen — if your app is in testing mode, your Google account must be listed as a test user.
  3. Confirm you have available Drive storage quota. A full Drive account will cause uploads to fail.
Cause: Under normal operation this should not happen. Both backup and restore run on background threads so the GUI stays responsive.Note: AutoBackupTool launches backup and restore operations using threading.Thread(daemon=True), which keeps the main GUI thread free. If the interface feels sluggish during a backup, it is most likely during the Drive upload phase — large folders take more time to compress, encrypt, and upload. This is expected behavior, not a freeze. The progress bar will advance to 100% when the upload completes.
Cause: There are no files on your Drive with backup_ in the title, or you are authenticated with a different Google account than the one used to create the backups.Fix:
  1. Open Google Drive in your browser and search for files named backup_. Confirm they exist under the correct account.
  2. If you are authenticated with the wrong account, delete mycreds.txt and rerun the app to go through the OAuth flow again with the correct account: 
    python backup_gui.py
Cause: The app window was closed before the scheduled time, or Stop Backup was clicked.Fix: The schedule runs only while the AutoBackupTool window is open. Keep the app running until your scheduled backup time. If you clicked Stop Backup, click Start Backup again to re-register the schedule.
Cause: This is either a first run (the log file has not been written yet) or the JSON file was corrupted.Note: AutoBackupTool handles this gracefully — if backup_log.json is empty or contains invalid JSON, log_backup() initializes the log as an empty list and continues normally. No manual intervention is needed. After the next successful backup, the log file will contain a valid entry.
If you encounter an issue not listed here, start by verifying that backup.env is correctly formatted and that client_secrets.json, backup.env, and (if previously authenticated) mycreds.txt are all present in the same directory as the app.

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