How To Download View-Only Google Spreadsheet?

Google Sheets offers two modes to secure the originality of Spreadsheet that is View only and Comment only. Both modes disable all input choices, which means that no one besides the Spreadsheet’s author may change the data in it. While this may appear to be very intelligent and secure, it also disables sorting data by Columns, creating filters, and other similar functions. However, there are some tricks that you can use to download view-only Google spreadsheet.

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Although you can’t download the original spreadsheet with these techniques but you can copy-paste the data into the new spreadsheet and save it as a separate file.

You did not understand, right?

Don’t worry we’ll talk about methods to download view-only Google Spreadsheet. Let’s get started without wasting any time.

Methods To Download View-Only Google Spreadsheet

Below are few methods to download view-only Google spreadsheets.

Method 1: Tweaking URL

Try modifying the URL. By doing this you can copy the content into a new spreadsheet. To do so, follow these steps,

• First, edit the URL and delete the marked part as shown in the picture below.

• Then, replace it with ‘preview‘, as shown in the image below.

• Now, select all of the content from the preview page and copy it.
• After that, create a new spreadsheet and click on Edit > Paste. Now, all the content you copied is pasted on the new spreadsheet.

• You may now edit or download the new spreadsheet.

Method 2: Using Chrome Extension

There is an extension developed by Justin Shenk available on the Chrome Web Store. It is the best method as it allows you to open the copyable sheet of the view-only spreadsheet. Let’s understand the process below. 

• You have to download the Enable Spreadsheet Copy extension from this link.

• Now, open the view-only spreadsheet in a browser tab.
• From the extension bar, click on the Enable Spreadsheet Copy extension icon.
• Now the “Open Copyable Sheet.” option will be shown.

• The new tab will show you the contents of the view-only spreadsheet. 
• All you have to do now is copy and paste the content into a new spreadsheet.
• You can now change and save the data from the view-only spreadsheet whenever you want.

In many circumstances, filters are required. For example, if you’re sharing sensitive company data with a lower-level employee and don’t want him or her to edit or tweak it by accident.

For that, you can add a filter in which they will need permission to change the spreadsheet. Even though they can duplicate the text using the methods described in this article but they cannot manipulate the original spreadsheet.

They can only save the file as a new spreadsheet into which the content of the original view-only spreadsheet has been pasted. Furthermore, the filter view is only available on a computer not on a smartphone or tablet.

Conclusion

Here concludes our tutorial on how to download view-only Google spreadsheet. We hope it is useful in your job and if you enjoyed the article, please leave your thoughts in the comments box and share the article with others.