Getting the download link for a public Google Docs file

Question

Reading the Google Docs API I find this:

Downloading

Files cannot be downloaded in a format other than the one in which they were originally uploaded. The download URL for files looks something like this:

https://doc-04-20-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/secure/m7an0emtau/WJm12345/YzI2Y2ExYWVm?h=16655626&e=download&gd=true

Given a public Google Documents file URL, say,

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1-vl-dPgKm_NTNhZjZkMWMtZjQxOS00MGE1LTg2MjItNGVjYzdmZjYxNmQ5

How can I turn it into a download link?

Answer 1

Hi nightcracker try this:

https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=DOCIDGOESHERE

I've only tried it with one pdf and it worked ok so maybe having a play with that will help....

All the best,

Dave

Answer 2

The method suggested by dkcwd didn't work for a published document.

I have found the following method in this page. Given a publish document URL, such as

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=[ID]

The download link is

https://docs.google.com/document/export?format=[FORMAT]&id=[ID]

where [FORMAT] can be one of these values: pdf, doc, docx, oo, rtf, txt.