Comments on: Open Any Document in Google Docs Via a Url

By: Eric Smith

Eric Smith — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:57:40 +0000

I developed a nice little app that helps you use Google docs just like you'd use a regular office suite.
If you're interested, have a look at http://www.gdocsopen.com

Hope this helps someone!

By: peptopinkboots

peptopinkboots — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:31:18 +0000

Very useful. Thank you!

By: jbasdf

jbasdf — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:54:32 +0000

Ya, Google changed their api. This was a cool hack while it lasted. I think there is still a way to do it but you have to write quite a bit more code and work with their api.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:06:20 +0000

hey this doesn't work anymore, it is my educated guess that google has changed the HTTP request for this function from GET to POST so url parameters won't work…

just to let you know

By: rnajan

rnajan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:12:55 +0000

ita very good facility

By: Justin Ball

Justin Ball — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:27:03 +0000

Google shut down this hack so now you have to use their apis which sucks because instead of five minutes to create a link you have to spend two days integrating their api calls and the user experience stinks (they have to login to Google and are required to follow several more steps).

It was nice when it worked. Wish Google would be more open.

By: nikki

nikki — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:27:26 +0000

Hi, I just tried this and it didn’t work – just sent me right to my docs homepage. Perhaps they’ve changed the google url? Any other suggestions?

By: Justin Ball

Justin Ball — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:52:17 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with this a bit and it would appear that Google has recently added some security that prevents you from opening a document directly via the url. Not sure why they would do this but personally I have started to find that Google doesn’t really like mashups or useful integrations. They provide APIs but I tend to find them far more complicated than they need to be (why should everything need to be a large atom based document you submit via a post) and far less useful than most. The url hack was an awesome way to make it easy for a user to add a link that let other users import a document into Google docs. Big failure here Google.

By: tom

tom — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:15:25 +0000

I am looking for a way to open a “google document” via a URL on a web page (or other allowed locations for such a link) – and I think you are saying you figured out how to do that but the link you provided was truncated. Could you reply to my email tom@gafyd.net and tell me if you know how to achieve what I’m seeking to do….. Thanks Much TOM

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:49:54 +0000

You’re the one to do it, Justin!