Friday, October 29, 2010

How To publish direct download links to your Google Doc

google_docs_logoScenario: You have a google doc whose contents you’re sharing with your friends and the world (ie, it’s publicly viewable)
This is a great alternative for publishing or sharing something big when you don’t have web designing skills or the time to set up something like a blog, or in sharing something among members of a team like the minutes of a meeting, or if it’s a one-off thing.
In case the document (can be a spreadsheet or presentation or drawing too) is big and you want to give the opposite person a way to save it for seeing later, then here’s how. Click on the expand link below to see the step-by-step procedure.
  1. Do this in Firefox or Opera or a browser that lets you copy a download link.
  2. Maybe you can have a download manager catching this (I have Free Download Manager, for instance.)
  3. Open your google doc. Make sure its sharing setting is like this:screenshot.115
  4. In case you can’t find the setting, you can access it from clicking on the above spot beside the doc’s title, or this below, then clicking on the “Change” link in the ensuing box.screenshot.116 
    >>screenshot.117
    >>screenshot.118
  5. Go to File > Download As > Choose your format, ex. PDF (this is the google doc’s File menu, not your browser’s.)
    screenshot.119
  6. The usual Save / Open dialog box will pop up. Save it normally, or thru a download manager – your choice.
  7. Now in the Downloads window, copy the download link URL.
    screenshot.114
  8. That’s it! This is the link! Now you can share that link anywhere!
Example : I just implemented it on this page. It has a google doc embedded inside it. At the bottom, I’ve added the lnks:
Read this offline! Download the entire list of MoM's in PDF (Acrobat) format or Word (.doc) format.
Advantage: This link points to the online document. So, supposing you had to make a correction in the doc or added some content, then you don’t need to resend the updated version : The link will immediately point to the new version. So you can nicely share this link on email, Facebook, Twitter, on a website – wherever – and never have to worry about somebody getting the older version by accident!

5 comments:

Tony said...

That is a GREAT bit of information. I've been looking all over the net for this kind of advice but nobody explained it as clearly as you did in this post.

Thank you.

Bala Prakash said...

Thank you Nikhil.
This info has just helped my NGO site www.fassglobalhands.in

MakorTech said...

I found out that for some reason, the dirct link works only on the corrent file version. If I update the zip file and upload it again to google drive, with the same name , the direct link I have created before, goes to the old version of the file and not the new file. So i have to create a new direct link, wich doesn't help so much.

Nathan A. Wright said...

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Many different people had (frustrating) articles on how to do this and yours was the ONLY one that worked!

Unknown said...

Great Yaaarrrr After Long Time I get Satified True Info By You

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