How to create a direct link to your

Google Sheets spreadsheet

To create a direct link to your spreadsheet, follow these steps:

1. First, create a sharing link of your Google Sheet.

Note
You may need to enable link sharing first. You'll need to set it to any one of the
following sharing permission levels:

On - Anyone with link can view

On - Anyone with link can edit
On - Public on the web can view
On - Public on the web can edit

To enable sharing on your Google Sheet, follow these steps:

1. Open your spreadsheet in Google Drive.

2. Click the blue Share button in the top right hand corner to open the Share with

others modal.

3. If your file isn't shared already, click Get shareable link.

Otherwise click the dropdown to choose the

access permissions and select More...
4. In the popup window select either On - Anyone with link can view or On -
Public on the web.
5. Click Save.

6. Back on the Share with others modal, click Copy link to copy your sharing link.

7. Click Done to close the Share with others modal.

2. Now to create the sharing link. We recommend using our link generator tool to
receive a direct download link.

Enter your generated link from Google in the Enter Share Link field and
click Generate.
3. Next we'll need to change the generated URL because this link will download in
PDF format by default. Copy the generated URL and paste into a text editor.

4. To make it download in .xlsx format, change the end of the URL

from ?format=pdf to ?format=xlsx.

Examples
Here's an example sharing link generated from Google Sheets:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gnNj6NFErrRY0NqEBVuYzPcxJ8hnFPzZ01QDe
o8xAW4/edit?usp=sharing

Example URL generated by the tool (set to .pdf download by default):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gnNj6NFErrRY0NqEBVuYzPcxJ8hnFPzZ01QDe
o8xAW4/export?format=pdf

Example final Geckoboard-friendly link in .xlsx download format:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gnNj6NFErrRY0NqEBVuYzPcxJ8hnFPzZ01QDe
o8xAW4/export?format=xlsx

5. Now you're ready to use the edited link in Geckoboard!

Hover your cursor over the dashboard square you would like to position your
new widget and click the + button.

6. Search for Spreadsheets using the Search sources field.

Alternatively, you can also click the Spreadsheets button.
7. From the Choose File menu, click on the link  icon.
8. Copy and Paste your URL in the Link to file field.

9. You can now continue updating your Google Sheet as usual and it will
automatically sync with Geckoboard via the generated link.
 Suggested next step
Now that you've linked up your spreadsheet with Geckoboard, you can now
begin creating visualizations using your spreadsheet.

How To Bypass Google

Was this article helpful?

Drive Viewer and Create Direct

Download Links
 appsevents
 April 11, 2014
 10:41 am
 One Comment

Google Drive has revolutionized the way we share files and collaborate with others. You
can upload and share almost any file format you can think of and the people whom you
share the file with can easily preview a file, even without installing the needed software on
their browser via Google Drive Viewer (PSD and CAD files anyone?).

This is an awesome feature, but there are cases where you may want to share a direct
download link instead of taking the user to the browser viewer. Say for example, you need
to print a document and the only printer available is connected to a shared PC. If you don’t
want to login to your Google account on other computers, a direct link would come in
handy.

Amit of Digital Inspiration has found a way to skip the web viewer and allow users to
download a file automatically. Currently, Google Drive doesn’t have an easy option to
generate direct links through the web UI. To do this, you simply need to edit the URL
generated based on the patterns below.

Typical share URL looks like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Direct download link equivalent:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILE_ID

As you can see, you only need to note of the FILE_ID. Note that the above URL pattern is
for creating direct links to file formats with no Google Drive equivalent such as image and
audio files. This trick also works for Docs, Sheets, and Presentations, but with a different
URL pattern. I have created a reference table below for your convenience, but you can also
take a look at Amit’s original post here.
Google Docs

Share URL:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Direct Link Format:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=doc (to download as .doc
format) https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf (to download as
PDF)

Google Sheets
Share URL:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Direct Link Format:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=xlsx (to download as an
Excel file) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf (to
download as PDF) Google
Presentations

Share URL:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Direct Link Format:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pptx (to download as PowerPoint)
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pdf (to download as PDF)

Other files

Share URL:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Direct Link Format:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILE_ID

Do you think bypassing Google Drive Viewer is helpful? Let us know in the comments
section below.

Create Direct Links to your Files on Google

Drive

Written by Amit Agarwal on Jan 2, 2014

You can upload files of virtually all types to your Google Drive – from
documents to movies to zip archives – and people with whom you have
shared the file can easily view them in the browser itself. The Google
Docs web viewer is pretty capable and can render all the popular formats
including Photoshop files and AutoCAD drawings.

That’s a useful feature but sometimes you may want to bypass the built-
in Google Docs viewer and force the browser to download the file
instead of opening it. Thus if a user has Photoshop on their computer,
the PSD file that you have shared through Google Drive will open in
Photoshop and not in their web browser.

Google Drive will mostly render shared links in the browser but you can change that.
Create Direct Links and Skip the Web Viewer

Google Drive doesn’t offer a simple option for creating these “direct
download” link but you can easily create them by slightly modifying the
generated URLs. Here’s the trick.

A file hosted on Google Drive has a shared link that looks like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

When you access this link, it will render the file in the browser but if you
can rewrite this URL slightly, the link, when clicked, will download the
corresponding file in the user’s browser instead of opening it in the
browser. The modified URL would be:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILE_ID

All you have to do is make note of the FILE_ID in the original URL and
use it in the modified URL. For example, here’s an image file hosted on
Google Drive that will open in the browser and here’s the modified
URL that forces the browser to download the file.

Direct Download Links for Google Documents

The trick works for native Google Documents too though the URL format
is a little different.

Google Docs: When you share a Google document, the URL would be:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing
Replace /edit with /export and add the file format that the document
should be saved as and your download link is ready.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=doc https://docs.google.com/
document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf

The above links will now download the same Google document in Word
(.docx) and PDF formats. You can also use “txt”, “html” and “odt” for the
download format.

Google Presentations: Google Docs offer an even simpler URL scheme

for creating direct links to Google Presentations. The original shared links
are of the following format:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

The direct links for downloading the same presentation deck in

PowerPoint (.pptx) and PDF formats are below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pptx https://docs.google.com/pr
esentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pdf

Google Spreadsheets: Open your Google Spreadsheet in the browser,

make the sheet Public (or Anyone with a link) and make a note of the
shared URL. It should be something like this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

The direct download links use a similar format as Google Documents and
will read like:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=xlsx https://docs.google
.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?fo

Bonus Trick – Make a Copy

Google Spreadsheets offers an additional feature that is not

available in Documents and Presentations (at least yet). You can
create links to Google Sheets that will automatically create a
copy of your Google Sheet in the Google Drive of the person
with whom you have shared the sheet.

Before: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing After: https:

//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=FILE_ID&newcopy=true

The newcopy=true parameter did the trick.