Email Documents to Google Docs

I’m sure the feature has been around for a while but I only noticed this evening that you can create document files in Google Docs by sending email to it. After logging in to Google Docs, click on the Upload link to read detailed information about how you can bring in foreign files (Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, for example) into Google Docs. If you move your eyes down the page a bit more, you’ll see instructions on how to create text documents by email (no spreadsheets yet). It works like this: Google assigns a unique email address to you in the form of username-secretstring@prod.writely.com (Google bought Writely to get their web based word processing techology). You can then either send a simple text email file or an attachment. The text on the subject line becomes the Google Docs document name. And, the text body or attached document file becomes the document text (translated to HTML).

The availability of QWERTY thumb keyboards on current generation phones makes this a simple and convenient way to quickly create easily accessible documents without the need to sync the mobile device by tethering it to a desktop or notebook computer. And, since I view the battle with Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center to be a losing one, anything that gets me away from those sync solutions is a good thing.

9 thoughts on “Email Documents to Google Docs”

  1. cAquaPro

    can’t find that email to address in my google docs upload page. do you have more detailed instruction? have they done away with this option?

  2. Alex

    This stopped working sometime in late 2009. I posted in Google’s forum about it and a Google employee responded and acknowledged it is broken, and said that there was no ETA for fixing it. I hope Google resurrects this – being able to just email stuff to Google docs would be quite handy.

  3. james watson

    This no longer appears to be supported. No amount of searching through Google docs led me to my “secretstring”. Pity

  4. Daniel

    Is there a way to append information to a spreadsheet in google docs, by sending an email to the name of that spreadsheet.

    For example: send an email to my_spreadsheet@prod.writely.com, and have the subject line appended to the spreadsheet document.

  5. ari

    Thank you for posting this. It was helpful since I use nonconventional browsers in some of my Linux distros that have issues with Google Docs – no firefox on these distros. SLAX

  6. Matthew A.

    Thanks again! I forgot how to do it, googled it and this was hit #1. I wanted to leave a thank you, looked at the comments, and see that I have been here before. Ha!

    Now it makes sense why my Google Documents email was already in my contacts (not on my iPhone though when I needed it).

  7. Nancy

    I am able to send use this email in feature froma computer, but the address does not work from my Blackberry Bold. Any idea about this? I know that address is correct because I copied and pasted it separately from the cc bar and from the text on both devices- and only does not work from the blackberry.

  9. Matthew A.

    Over a year later and you still can’t upload PDFs or Spreadsheets with an email address. This whole email document to yourself is very secret agent to me.

    Thanks for the info, I have noticed this disclaimer on the upload page before, but never had a need to use it until today.

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