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Can you use a URL to create a new Google Document/Spreadsheet/Presentation from a template?

Related questions (but don't answer this specific problem):

2 Answers 2

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I don't use a template, because more likely I just want a consistent way to create a new document from an existing document - without accidentally editing the original document.

I first create an ideal version of a file. From the menu, I then choose "Make a copy...", which then allows me to select the target Google Drive directory. This directory is where all new versions of this file will be created. On submitting the form, a new tab opens, from which I (quickly) copy the URL before the page redirects to the new version.

The "/copy?" URL looks something like:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/a/example.com/document/d/{SOMEID}/copy?id%3D{SOMEID}%26copyCollaborators%3Dfalse%26copyComments%3Dfalse%26title%3DNew%2520document%26copyDestination%3D... 

I've truncated the URL above, replacing some values, but you can see there are some values in there that can be modified, such as whether to copy comments and collaborators.

I then save this URL as a bookmark, or distribute it to my staff, or paste it back into the bottom of the initial document ("Use this file as a template) and "publish" the initial document.

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    This works perfectly for my needs! Thanks. Some additional notes I found from using your answer: 1) You don't need to use a google.com/url endpoint, you can just use the docs.google.com url. It still works and it's cleaner to read without the urlencoded url 2) copyDestination can point to a Google Drive Folder ID https://docs.google.com/document/d/{{Document ID}}/copy?id={{Document ID}}&copyCollaborators=false&copyComments=false&title=New+Research+Report&copyDestination={{Google Drive Folder ID}}
    – Brent Chow
    Jul 26, 2017 at 16:37
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do you know if it is possible to copy a document (imagine it is a blank template with string into the content), and pass throught the url parameter the valeue to put inside to new copied-doc ? somthing like : https://docs.google.com/document/d/{{Document ID}}/copy?id={{Document ID}}&copyCollaborators=false&copyComments=false&title=New+Research+Report&copyDestination={{Google Drive Folder ID}} & tag1=myvalue & tag2=myvalue & tag3=myvalue

if replacing the tags by values is possible without the copy feature, i'd be very interesting by the solution ! it would be super to user google docs as a template and fill tag with data from url !

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