The ease of sharing Google Docs and Sheets is one of the reasons we love Google Drive, and use it so often.

However, what if you want the person you’re sharing the Doc or Sheet with to make a copy without having to explain how to make the copy?

Gone are the days of putting copy instructions at the top of your document…

Instead, this is what your file recipient will see…

Ready to make this sharing hack happen for your own shared documents?

Here’s how:

    1. Make sure that the sharing settings for your Google Doc or Sheet will allow any recipient to view the document.
      > Click the Share Icon or button
      > In the “Get link” section, change the sharing settings to “anyone with the link”
      > Copy the link to your clipboard
    2. Change the text after the last / to “copy” (no quotes)
    3. Copy the new full URL and share that (see gif for steps 2 and 3)
    4. The person clicking that URL (the one that ends in /copy) will be prompted to copy the file to their own Google Drive.

Easy as pie. If pie were easy (to bake! eating pie is really easy).

p.s. (Hack #22) This blog post is part of a series called Top 40 Google Hacks You’ll Wish You’d Been Using All Along. Download the whole handy Top 40 Google Hacks PDF.