How to Copy Data From View Only Google Sheets (Updated Works in 2025)

How to Copy Data From View Only Google Sheets

How to update the URL:

Replace the end of the url which may look like "edit?gid=0#gid=0" with "htmlpreview"

Fluff description:

Greetings, in this google sheets tutorial we shall be looking at how you can copy and paste data from a view only google sheet. This tutorial is great for if you have a google sheet you can view, but you can't make a copy, you can't export it, you can't download it and you can't copy and paste the cells containing the data.

Well with this tutorial on how to copy data from a view only google sheet, you can copy and paste the data with no issue. So to to copy data from view Only Google sheets you need to go to your url address bar and at the end where it says "edit?gid=0#gid=0", change that text to "htmlpreview". Then hit enter and your will load the google sheet you want to copy data from in preview mode. Htmlpreview mode for a google sheet will allow you to copy and paste data, even if you couldn't in edit mode. This works perfectly for view only google sheets.

Now you need to download the htmlview version of the webpage. So rightclick on the webpage and click on save as. Download the webpage as a webpage HTML only html file. It needs to be webpage HTML or the next steps won't work.

Now open the html file in your web browser.

If you copy the entire google sheet and paste it into a new google sheet, all the data will be pasted in the correct rows and columns! So this method allows you to basically make a copy of a view only google sheet. Then in this new google sheet you have made and pasted data into from the view only google sheet. You can then download, export, make a copy of or do whatever you want to the sheet you made. So this basically lets you download a view-only google sheet online.

One thing to note about this way to copy a view only google sheet. You can only copy data you are able to access in view only mode for the google sheet. You won't be able to copy anything in the view only google sheet that you don't have access to when viewing the document in view only mode. Some formatting changes also down't work with this method to copy data from a view only google sheet. For example BOLD text, italic text or text with a line through it. So there are limitations to this way of copying data from a view only google sheet.

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This tutorial should help answer the following questions:

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