Copy Google Documents to Your Account

Someone sent me the link to a document published using Google Docs, but I didn’t have the permission to edit the document. I wanted to save the document to my Google Docs account, but none of the options offered by Google allowed me to do that.

One of the ways you could create a duplicate for the document is to replace

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=AAAAA

with

http://docs.google.com/DocAction?action=copy&docid=AAAAA

where AAAAA is the document ID.

To automate the process, I created a small user script that adds an option to duplicate the document. The script works in:

* Firefox, if you install Greasemonkey
* Chrome, if you install the latest pre-beta version
* Opera (no add-on required)
* Safari, if you install GreaseKit
* Internet Explorer, but you need to install a plug-in like IE7Pro

Here’s a sample document to try it. After installing the script, open the document, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Copy to my account”.

Another idea is to upload the document to Google Docs, but you need to edit the URL to remove the footer and add the .html extension. Replace

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=AAAAA

with

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=AAAAA&hgd=1&.html