Force download link on a google docs spreadsheet

Question

Is there a way to force a download link instead of the browser trying to open the file? In this case I have a docs spreadsheet and a some links to mp3 files. I want the users to

Answer 1

To expand on Mokarom's answer (because I can't comment) you need to replace the part of those links that say "yourDocId" with the document id of the page you're trying to download. This is the key= part of the url.

For example, if you had a spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhjOs40Xk1-4dGg0MjMVYURPMFRpeUFhbmZBTkZ0dEE#gid=8, then you would go to https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/download/spreadsheets/Export?key=0AhjOs40Xk1-4dGg0MjMVYURPMFRpeUFhbmZBTkZ0dEE&exportFormat=csv for the download link.

Answer 2

In my app I needed to download a Google Drive's spread sheet in the form of a CSV file (Comma Separated Values). Google Drive's files are referenced by long ID's such as:

1uFwmwD5UFLdD1DMPGT5p4fIGozfImx44DNCOeMJr1Lo

Here is a code block that will do this. If there is an error the method will return a zero length string.

- (NSString *) downloadGoogleSheetGivenFileID: (NSString *) ID {
// This will download a Google spreadsheet given it's file ID
// and convert it to a CSV file.
NSString    *   preFix;
NSURL       *   myURL;
NSString    *   opCmd;
NSString    *   t;
NSString    *   theStuff;
NSError     *   error = nil;

theStuff = @"";
// The URL has to be: prefix+ID+opCmd  The only thing that changes is the file's ID
preFix = @"https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/download/spreadsheets/Export?key=";
opCmd = @"&exportFormat=csv";
t = preFix;
t = [t stringByAppendingString:ID];
t = [t stringByAppendingString:opCmd];
myURL = [NSURL URLWithString:t];
theStuff = [NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:myURL encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];
if(error != nil)
{
    // There was an error downloading the spread sheet file.
    // We will return a zero length string.
    NSLog(@"%@",error);
}
return theStuff;

}

Answer 3

To make download links for documents - https://docs.google.com/feeds/download/documents/Export?docID=yourDocId

To make download links for any file - https://docs.google.com/uc?id=yourDocId&export=download&hl=en_US

To make download links for spreadsheets - https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/download/spreadsheets/Export?key=yourDocId&exportFormat=csv

For further information please go here

---

UPDATING IN 2018

The new download URL is
  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/<KEY>/export?gid=<GID>&format=csv
where <KEY> and <GID> can be obtained from your navigation's URL,
  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/<KEY>/edit#gid=<GID>

PS: spreadsheets (workbook) may have multiple sheets (worksheets), GID is the desired sheet ID. One-sheet-spreadsheet usually has gid=0, but if you add more they'll have random numbers (the GID is preserved even changing tab-order).

So, using wget or curl you can test,

   wget --no-check-certificate -O test.csv \
    'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/0At2sqNEgxTf3dEt5SXBTemZZM1gzQy1vLVFNRnludHc/export?gid=0&format=csv'