Sharing Google Docs: One link to edit, one link to view

Posted: - Modified: | geek, tips
This page is out of date, since Google Docs has changed a lot since 2013. Sorry!

Lots of people posted tips in the Google Helpouts Discuss community, but the tips were getting lost in the stream of messages. I decided to pull out the tips, rewrite them for clarity, and organize them by topic. I didn’t want to be the keeper of the document, though – no sense in my being a bottleneck! So I started a new document in Google Docs, fleshed it out, and shared the link.

To share a link that lets anyone with the link edit the document:

  1. Click on File > Share…
  2. Under Who has access, change the first line to Anyone who has the link can edit.
  3. Copy the link.
  4. Click Done.

That’s all well and good, but when it comes to publishing the document to the Web, you probably don’t want just anyone editing it. Here’s how to publish a separate read-only link:

  1. Click on File > Publish to the web…
  2. Publish the document
  3. Copy the link.

Since Google URLs are long and unwieldy, you may want to come up with custom short URLs for both the edit link and the read-only link.

Hope that helps!

You can view 13 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

13 comments

Runar Jordahl

2015-08-12T20:13:32Z

You should never make a short URL for the editable link. The long URL prevents anyone from finding it, as traversing all possible URLs takes too long. If it is turned into a short URL, it can be discovered by traversing the rather limited space of short URLs.

What about a "view" mode link for people that have edit ability (not restricting them from editing, just a mode more appropriate for just viewing)? I've seen drive open files in the past where I still had to hit "Open in Drive" or "Open with" to go deeper.

Mark Haferkamp

2017-03-30T02:53:35Z

Make sure to compare the URLs Google gives you! I found that the only difference (after Google's redirection from an organization-specific part of the URL) was "pubhtml" vs "edit#gid=0" at the end. In fact, simply removing "pubhtml" from the end of the "read-only" link let me edit the document (in a fresh private browsing window, so nothing to do with being logged in). Unless Google makes the links nondeterministically different, this is useless against blocking even mildly sophisticated rogue editors.

That's not good. Hmph!

At present, I find that the URLs are totally different, can not simply guess editable URL from published URL.

Well for me it is the exact same almost. I don't like that I cannot share a file for viewers and editors with 2 separate links. Better to write a proper web application or install a CMS in 5 mins than using this joke.

Random Boy 3 m

2018-01-06T00:52:12Z

Where's "File > Publish to the web"?

If you're looking at a Google Docs document in edit mode, you should see the menu above the toolbar. Clicking on the File item should show you the menu.

Random Boy 3 m

2018-01-27T15:31:57Z

A tool bar?

Greg Kisinger

2020-01-01T03:14:17Z

Hi Sacha, I just noticed the shareable View and Edit links are exactly the same. I clicked on the View link and I could delete words in my document. Thoughts?

Is this answer still valid? https://webapps.stackexchan...

Greg Kisinger

2020-01-06T14:26:50Z

Hi Sacha, I'm sure the "answer" link you provided is still valid, but it doesn't address my specific issue. I thought a specific Google Doc could have both - a link for View only and a link for Edit only, but apparently the situation is one or the other. However, if an author provides the View only link then the author can also add select people's e-mail addresses and grant them Edit privileges. Thank you for responding.

Thanks for the clarification and the update! I haven't been keeping up with the changes to Google services, so I'm sure I'll run into little hiccups like that too. I hope your workaround can mostly handle what you wanted to do!