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I've a drawing I made in SVG format and I'd like to include it in a Google document I'm writing. I tried uploading the SVG file but it only lets me view it, not edit it. Any Google searches for uploading SVG to Google Docs find lots of people asking for the feature but no hints on how to do it.

Is it impossible for now?

Is there any API for Google Drawings?

Any way to create a Google drawing other than dragging a mouse around on their web site?

I tried uploading an OpenOffice text document that included a drawing, but the drawing got removed.

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    I would like to state that I was not successful with any of the solutions posted below (December, 2016)
    – Bort
    Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 2:18
  • @Bort same here, see a new answer below, working as of August 2017
    – Bryce
    Commented Aug 7, 2017 at 20:50
  • I found it mostly works, but google drawings will not draw bitmapped portions of an emf file. See my post here --> productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/Y8wfU4by6tY
    – mgraham
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 14:10
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    First of all, the amount of work required to attempt this is ridiculous. Second, SVG file saved from my drawing program came in at 424k, PDF at 163k and PNG at 25k and looked just as good. I regret the time I wasted due to thinking that I should try to use SVG in Google Docs!
    – Michael
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 22:42

13 Answers 13

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The information to convert .svg into .wmf has been obsoleted. At some point during year 2016 Google chose not to accept .wmf-files anymore. The correct solution is to convert .svg into .emf, which does work at the time of writing. My recommendation is to use free-of-charge service CloudConvert for .emf conversion, there is no software to be owned or installed.

I created a newbie guide for .svg into .emf conversion.

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    Thanks for finding a workable solution. Did you successfully upload an EMF file to a Google Drawing without using CloudConvert? I can only get this to work if I ask CloudConvert to save it directly to GoogleDrive. Even downloading from CloudConvert then uploading to Google Drive didn't work for me.
    – Don Kirkby
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 20:47
  • 30
    As of today, I can no longer open EMF files in google drawings
    – Arion
    Commented Feb 1, 2018 at 0:07
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    Since what you're saying is alarming, I went and tested that myself. I downloaded a free clipart .svg, uploaded that to Google Drive, at Drive did a Open With ... CloudConvert, saved it back as .emf and finally at Drive did Open With ... Google Drawings. The .emf shows as expected. No deviation from previous discusssion.
    – HQJaTu
    Commented Feb 1, 2018 at 9:00
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    I saved a .emf file from Illustrator, but Google G Suite is unable to open it anywhere. If the image gets rasterized, as Herb Caudill writes, then G Suite is a lost cause, to be honest.
    – zmippie
    Commented Feb 19, 2018 at 16:19
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    @ijoseph Again, that is alarming to read.I did go through the familiar test-cycle of uploading an .svg and going to Cloudconvert to have it as .emf. And you're right! If you do upload it from a local drive to Google Drive, it will be flagged as "image" and it won't open in Google Drawings. If you let Cloudconvert have access to your Google Drive and save it directly there, it will be of "unknown type", but the file WILL open in Google Drawings as a vector drawing.
    – HQJaTu
    Commented Feb 6, 2019 at 8:00
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Well, convert that .svg into a .wmf file.

I used InkScape and UniConverter.

More info: Google Docs Official Blog Post: Import WMF files into Google drawings

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  • I can't get this to work any more, I can't find the Upload with the check box to convert. The link in your blog does not take me to an Upload page.
    – PhilHibbs
    Commented May 11, 2022 at 10:59
  • @PhilHibbs, what happens when you upload a wmf file to Drive and double click it on the web interface? Does it prompt you to convert at that point?
    – MyPreciousss
    Commented May 12, 2022 at 15:08
  • I get to open it in Paint, LibreOffice Draw, or CloudConvert. An EMF will open in Google drawings editor, but I can't get it from there into a Google Sheets document without it becoming a raster that can't be copied and pasted.
    – PhilHibbs
    Commented May 15, 2022 at 17:39
  • Does not work as of writing.
    – Ayberk Özgür
    Commented Feb 4 at 9:23
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As of August 2017, I was finally able to do this with a seven step procedure:

  1. Upload the target SVG file to Google Drive, as a regular file.
  2. Install "CloudConvert" into Google Drive, and give it permission to read all your documents (scary!
  3. Click on the SVG file, and right click to send to CloudConvert.
  4. Convert to "EMF" format and (this is crucial) save back to Google Drive.
  5. Open the EMF in Google Drawings and verify it looks good.
  6. Under the Edit Menu, choose Copy.
  7. Finally, in your Google Doc, choose Paste.
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    As of Nov 2017, I can't see any way to do step 6 - when I try to open the emf file in google drawings, it says no preview available. doesn't import anything.. Also, there is not "web clipboard" within the edit menu
    – Sujay Phadke
    Commented Nov 22, 2017 at 5:02
  • Seems the web clipboard isn't a thing any more, but regular copy-and-paste should work (only into a drawing or a presentation). To paste into Docs or Sheets you need to insert a Drawing and then paste into there, and the image will then be rasterized.
    – Herb Caudill
    Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 16:24
  • This appears to be the only working method as of Sep 2020.
    – Janosh
    Commented Sep 23, 2020 at 9:57
  • Does not work if you UPLOAD emf file to GD, but works if you CloudConvert svg2emf WITHIN google drive. Then in google doc click "Insert - Drawing" (not "insert - image"!)
    – jitbit
    Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 9:07
  • Does not work as of writing.
    – Ayberk Özgür
    Commented Feb 4 at 9:23
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  1. Add svg to a LibreOffice Impress document (OpenDocument Presentation) .odp and save as mysvgs.odp.
  2. Upload it to Google Drive.
  3. Open mysvgs.odp in Google Drive and copy-paste the svg image where is needed.

Details:

  • It works on Linux, OSX, Windows.
  • The Google Presentation document saved as pdf contains the svg at proper resolution.
  • It works like this in july 2018.
  • I used LibreOffice-5.4.4.2
  • Based on @philhibbs answer
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  • screencast.com/t/GWumFEkQc is an SVG file on my desktop taken thru Impress to .odp to driver (preview was blank) then into Google Presentations, then zoomed in quite a bit. I think it is a bitmap of some sort :(
    – paul_h
    Commented Dec 22, 2018 at 6:26
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    If you right-click on the SVG inside LibreOffice Impress and choose Break, and then save the .odp, upload to Google Drive, and then open using Google Slides, the image should no longer be a bitmap and can be copied/pasted into a Google Drawings. You can test whether it's a bitmap by clicking on individual shapes and filling/stroking them with a color, or altering the stroke properties.
    – notedible
    Commented May 2, 2019 at 17:56
  • As of Oct 2019, this is the only solution that worked for me.
    – azbarcea
    Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 0:59
  • By the time it is opened in Google Sheets, the image is already rasterized.
    – haridsv
    Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 12:45
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    2021 update, in the libreoffice impress step, convert (right button) to polygon
    – Ferroao
    Commented Jun 26, 2021 at 2:53
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You can upload your SVG file to http://openclipart.org and then there is an automatic conversion to WMF / EMF on the clipart page.

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I've got close, but not quite there.

  1. Paste the vector into a spreadsheet in LibreOffice
  2. Upload the spreadsheet to Google Drive
  3. Copy the vector object
  4. In the other sheet, Insert Drawing
  5. Paste the object, but it pastes as a bitmap instead of a vector

Alternatively, follow steps 1 and 2, and then transfer the contents of your other sheet into the uploaded one and accept that you can't add any more vectors to it. You might have luck downloading the Google sheet as an ODS file, adding your vectors in LibreOffice, and uploading it back to Google again, as long as all your sheet content is compatible with LibreOffice.

I got this working. The trick was to upload the ODS sheet to Google Drive, and then open it using Sheets and copy the tab into the sheet that you want to use the images in.

2022 Update: Unfortunately this is no longer working! As soon as I open the ODS file in Google, then the vectors are just low resolution bitmaps.

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  • Microsoft Office also works
    – xmo
    Commented Jun 8, 2021 at 23:01
  • Does not work as of writing.
    – Ayberk Özgür
    Commented Feb 4 at 9:24
  • Sadly it is correct that this no longer works- Google disabled it, I think due to security concerns.
    – PhilHibbs
    Commented Feb 5 at 16:57
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Now it's 2022 and I must publish here what has worked for me today. Luckily, it is quite straightforward. I also assume that other solutions would also work but I've tried only this one and it works without any weird obstacles.

  1. Normally upload SVG to Google Drive
  2. Use CloudConvert free service to convert that file to EMF vector format, and save that file back to Google Drive. There is a checkbox "Save output files to Google Drive" in CloudConvert. This step is no more than 2 minutes.
  3. This step is probably not necessary: Right-Click on that new EMF file in Google Drive and open it in Google Drawings. Maybe you should "Select All", Right-Click and "Ungroup" that drawing, but I didn't do that. Actually, I've skipped this whole step, but my graphic was a very simple QR code.
  4. Lastly, inside Google Docs Insert Drawing, not "Insert Image", and voilà, there it is in its vector glory!

I've tried various copy-paste procedures, but they didn't work for me and my Google Docs document.

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    Doesn't work in 2023
    – Craig
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 6:05
  • Can you please elaborate which step exactly doesn't work? As I've just tried again, in 2023, and it works perfectly. Maybe it is something else?
    – Vladan
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 12:46
  • Actually, it doesn't matter. This is too much hassle for such a simple operation. Shame on Google.
    – Vladan
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 12:51
  • Step 3, Can't right click to open in Google Drawings as EMF is not supported either. Seems very odd to have a drawing program that can't use SVG.
    – Craig
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 2:43
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    Step 1. and 2. are both run from inside Google Drive, nothing is uploaded to CloudConvert and nothing is downloaded from CloudConvert. CloudConvert will read from Google Drive and it will save to Google Drive (note the checkbox). If you do it like that, it works. Anything done differently and it won't work.
    – Vladan
    Commented Aug 7, 2023 at 13:57
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I found that converting my drawing to a WMF allowed it to be converted into a Google Doc.

I had to export my ODF as a WMF. Then after uploading it to my Google Drive, I could right-click and open it as a Google Drawing.

There were some problems where my original drawing used a gradient fill and the conversion turned the gradient fill into a collection of individual lines in the converted drawing.

So the workflow for migrating a drawing from OpenOffice would be:

  • Isolate the vector drawing as a OpenOffice Draw document. (avoid complex fill patterns)
  • Export the drawing as a WMF
  • From Google Drive, upload the file If you don't have automatic conversion enabled,right-click and convert to Google Doc

I haven't yet worked out a clean workflow for converting OpenOffice docs with embedded drawings. I have a feeling that it's not that easy with Google Drive so far.

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Most of the answers above work. However, whenever you decide to download the document as a PDF, Google will automatically convert the vectors into low quality images. Hence, this solution may not be optimal for everyone.

What I did notice was the it wont convert it into images if you download the document as a word document, and THEN save it a PDF.

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It is easy to copy vectors from Google Presentations to Drawings in Google Docs via the Web clipboard. Now to get them to Google Presentations you need a workaround.

Actually EMF is better and newer than WMF. It has gradients. PowerPoint (Windows version) is the best EMF converter I know of.

The workflow I use is this Here is the instruction video

  • Inkscape > EMF,
  • EMF > Powerpoint 2010
  • PowerPoint > DrawingML (Microsoft internal vector thingy),
  • Convert to GPresentations
  • Use the Google Docs Web Clipboard to copy the vector around.

Longer description here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/ZNFr2_GdDRg

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Similar to many other people, I tried to import a vector graphics figure from inkscape into Google drawings. Following these steps worked for me:

  1. Convert your svg drawing to wmf in inkscape. Attention: Make sure your canvas covers all of the elements you wish to export ;)
  2. Insert the wmf image into a presentation file (I tried both MS PowerPoint and LibreOffice impress). The content will be pasted as a group, if you need to adapt a few things, you can ungroup it and muck about with it as you wish. Save it.
  3. Upload the presentation to your google drive and open it in google slides. Select all the elements you wish to import into google drawings by drawing a frame or typing Ctrl+A and copy them to the clipboard with Ctrl+C.
  4. Open a new drawing in google drawings and paste the copied figure. That's it.

A few remarks:

  • This solution works without CloudConvert or similar tools
  • If you like using free software (aside from the google stuff, of course), there are no major obstacles. I found that the pasted file needs a bit more tweaking when using LibreOffice than with PowerPoint, since the text field dimensions aren't translated as well, but that's a minor detail in my opinion.
  • emf doesn't work with PowerPoint, at least I wasn't be able to convert it into something usable: it will yield a rasterized image. Emf works fine with impress, though. I didn't test any apple software, feel free to add a comment below.
  • When you preview the slides in google, you may just see a lot of text. Don't worry: As soon as the actual slides software opens it, everything looks fine.
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  • I have GSuite for Education and the PowerPoint was opened in Google as a .pptx (it doesn't do conversion to Google Slides like it used to). However, the process works the same way.
    – Fuhrmanator
    Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 21:42
  • Using Inkscape causes (for me) a problem with any SVG text elements that are wrapped dynamically (I'm actually creating them in draw.io and saving as .drawio.svg). Instead of wrapped text (which shows OK in the browser), Inkscape shows only one line with "..." at the end. This is probably due to incompatible ways of how draw.io and Inkscape wrap text in SVG. Since Inkscape is the converter to WMF, we're stuck with those limitations.
    – Fuhrmanator
    Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 21:44
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As of November 2021, the EMF/WMF and CloudConvert routes do not work.

To get your vector into Google Drawings, you first need to get it into Google Slides. Once it is native shapes in Google Slides, you can copy and paste those shapes into a Drawing.

To get native shapes into a Google Slides document, you need them first to be native shapes in another slide format that Google understands, such as PowerPoint. Drop your vector art into powerpoint either as SVG or WMF, and then Ungroup the graphic to reduce it to native PowerPoint shapes. Now upload this file to Google Drive, and open it in Google Slides. Voila!

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  • Can't ungroup the drawing that was SVG as it was pulled into Powerpoint 16.16.27 (Mac). Group menu shows, but ungroup is ghosted
    – paul_h
    Commented Mar 6, 2022 at 14:53
  • This helps me a bit, but I had to copy and paste every element separately.
    – Madgui
    Commented May 16, 2022 at 11:03
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    That route actually still works in 2022, see my answer: webapps.stackexchange.com/a/166753/10750
    – Vladan
    Commented Sep 21, 2022 at 17:18
  • Does not work as of writing.
    – Ayberk Özgür
    Commented Feb 4 at 9:22
  • Yeah I tried this - I get as far as Google Slides, I can see my picture, but I can't get it from there into Sheets. Oh, Insert -> Drawing then Paste does i!
    – PhilHibbs
    Commented Feb 5 at 17:16
0

You can now create drawings through the Google Slides API. If you want that in a Google Drawing, Doc, or Sheet, you can copy it there.

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