Did you know there is a quick and easy way to force someone to make a copy of a Google Drive including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings? When you are editing one of these types of documents, you will notice the word “edit” appears at or near the end of the URL. If you delete the word “edit” (and any text following it) and replace it with the word “copy”, then share the new URL with someone, it will force them to create their own copy.

The new hyperlink is still too long to type out so unless you have a place to post the link, you will need to use a URL shortener to create a link that you can share either verbally or writing on a board.

Applications for Education
There are times when we need to share documents with colleagues or students and we don’t have time to share it in and email or push it out through a service like Google Classroom. If someone is new to Google, they might not know how to create a copy of a doc and this trick saves them from having to complete that step.

Here is an example of what this process looks like: