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Question - Google Docs sharing

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
16 years ago2,174 views

I know you can publish a Doc as a web page but is there a way to make a link that when clicked downloads it as a .doc file?

ATM I'm downloading then emailing the file, what I want to do is just send a link so that my friends can just download the file themselves.

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

When you publish a document it is given a unique URL that looks something like this: docs.google.com/View?docid=[ID].

By modifying this url we can link straight to the document as a file without hitting save as. More importantly, on any published document ANYONE will be able to save your document as any filetype by simply following the provided link.

The modified URI looks like this:
docs.google.com/MiscCommands?command=
saveasdoc&exportformat=[FORMAT]&docID=[ID]

Where [FORMAT] can be either pdf, doc, oo, rtf or txt and [ID] is the unique ID of your document.

This is also possible for spreadsheets except that the URL will instead look like this:

spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=[ID]&output=[FORMAT]

Where [FORMAT] is either pdf, ods, csv, txt or xls.

(credit: ahab, Google Groups)

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Thanks for that! It'll make things a lot simpler for me :-)

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

This should be a feature, not something we have to do ourselves

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]DPic
You mean an "URL generator"? Otherwise, I don't see any solution, except perhaps in all Google Apps (and only Google Apps), the hyperlink editor could detect Google docs/spreadsheet and propose to open it in a specific format.

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Publish --> Publish to web, publish as [select format(s)]

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I see a greasemonkey script coming :D

(please....someone?)

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Google Spreadsheets already has this option:

Publish > More publishing options > File format > Generate URL

Google could try to be a bit more consistent...

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