September 5, 2009

Upload Multiple Files to Google Docs

If you want to upload a lot of documents to Google Docs, it's difficult to upload them one by one. You can send the documents by email, but this option is not very reliable and not all the formats are supported.

Google Docs has an API that lets you upload, download and edit documents, but there aren't many applications that use it. One of these applications is Google Docs Batch Upload, developed by Anton Beloglazov. It's a command-line Java application, so it should work in Windows, Mac, Linux, as long as you have JRE 1.6.

Google Docs Batch Upload lets you upload all the files supported by Google Docs from one of your folders. Use the following command to upload all the files from a folder and all its subfolders (unfortunately, the application doesn't recreate the folder structure in Google Docs):

java -jar google-docs-upload-1.0.jar <path> --recursive

(replace <path> with the path to the folder you want to upload)


In other news, documents will not be editable from 12:00 to 1:30 pm PST, according to the Google Apps Status Dashboard.
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23 comments:

  1. skyhardSeptember 5, 2009 at 9:20 AM

    we want google drive and the new docs interface!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kevin McFarlaneSeptember 5, 2009 at 9:46 AM

    What we could do with is a drag and drop interface.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alex ChituSeptember 5, 2009 at 9:51 AM

    Command-line isn't a user-friendly interface, but you won't upload multiple files to Google Docs very often. A sync tool would be useful, but it will probably be available when Google Drive is released.

    ReplyDelete
  4. skyhardSeptember 5, 2009 at 10:03 AM

    why won't docs be available today? anything to do with google drive? what about the new interface?

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2009 at 11:51 AM

    Thanks for sharing great information. I am very passionate aboutupload and that's what my site speaks about. I would look ahead to be coming to this site time and again to gian more tips. I am still a novice so couldn't really compete to comment with other guys here.

    thanks again

    ReplyDelete
  6. ZachSeptember 5, 2009 at 12:35 PM

    I am interested in the Google Drive too. In the meanwhile, I am using the free Gladinet tool (http://www.gladinet.com) to map Google Docs as a virtual drive in Windows Explorer. I can drag and drop file both ways (upload/download). It works well for me. I havn't tried the latest Glaidnet feature to backup my Google Apps's google docs to my other personal google docs account yet.

    ReplyDelete
  7. RebecaSeptember 5, 2009 at 12:48 PM

    @Kevin McFarlane: If you use Google Desktop, you can install the Google Docs gadget which would let you drag and drop documents into Google Docs (through the gadget). That's worked well for me. However, I've had some issues when PDFs were among the documents I was trying to drag and drop. It's possible they might have fixed that issue by now though.

    ReplyDelete
  8. skyhardSeptember 5, 2009 at 2:36 PM

    That's weird:/ Google docs was down for almost two hours, but no change has been made to the interface. Man I really hoped they would finally enable the promised google (docs) web drive! I am usually not inpatient:):)

    ReplyDelete
  9. AntonSeptember 6, 2009 at 4:08 AM

    Alex,

    Thank you for writing about my tool. I've updated the list of supported formats, now it includes: csv, doc, docx, html, htm, ods, odt, pdf, ppt, pps, rtf, sxw, tsv, tab, txt, xls, xlsx. So docx, xlsx and some others are also supported. I'm also going to add an ability to recreate the folder structure.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AdamSeptember 8, 2009 at 7:36 AM

    Command-line is great because we can then do all sorts of scripts to automate a ton of processes!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Scott JSeptember 9, 2009 at 10:41 PM

    @Zach,
    I must say, http://www.gladinet.com is pretty awesome. It's pretty much the way to go... now if i could find an unlimited free version or something like it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Aman S. AnejaSeptember 24, 2009 at 11:43 AM

    Thats Quite Good Option!! But If any error occurs how the user can be notified!!

    http://amanrulesit.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2009 at 9:08 AM

    http://www.docstechnotes.com/2009/08/upload-multiple-documents-to-google.html


    gdocsuploader

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousOctober 10, 2009 at 2:08 PM

    Help! I think I did everything right, but when I run the batch, it asks me username and password. I guess it will be my google docs username and password, and I put it there. In return, I aways get AUTHENTIFICATION ERROR

    ReplyDelete
  15. AntonOctober 12, 2009 at 9:30 PM

    Try to put your username including the domain name.

    Note: upper and lower case letters are different.

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousNovember 22, 2009 at 2:33 AM

    Can't understand Google on this one...
    Why don't they provide a simple app to mass transfer local files to Docs?
    I am a strong believer in having data in the cloud but Google is making it difficult for me to migrate...
    Folder structure alone is already a hassle.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Alex ChituNovember 22, 2009 at 3:08 AM

    @Anonymous:

    Google provides an API that could be used to build an application for uploading files to Google Docs. Like this one.

    ReplyDelete
  18. UnknownFebruary 28, 2010 at 2:32 AM

    java.lang.NullPointerException
    at DocumentList.getDocsListFeed(DocumentList.java:354)
    at GoogleDocsUpload.getDocsFromFolder(GoogleDocsUpload.java:573)
    at GoogleDocsUpload.uploadFolder(GoogleDocsUpload.java:376)
    at GoogleDocsUpload.upload(GoogleDocsUpload.java:353)
    at GoogleDocsUpload.main(GoogleDocsUpload.java:302)

    ReplyDelete
  19. AntonFebruary 28, 2010 at 7:41 PM

    Iceman,

    The bug has been fixed, please try to use the new version:

    http://google-docs-upload.googlecode.com/files/google-docs-upload-1.3.2.jar

    ReplyDelete
  20. AnonymousMarch 1, 2010 at 4:07 AM

    We're using the beta of the Linux Drive from SMEStorage.com on Ubuntu. It works pretty well and enables me to view /upload files to my Google Docs account as a virtual drive. They also advertise a windows virtual drive with some other windows tooling.

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousJuly 20, 2011 at 11:20 AM

    Nice to know this is still around, but is there realy any need for something like this after google added folder upload to docs?

    ReplyDelete
  22. doshpromptOctober 1, 2011 at 10:50 AM

    @Anton,

    When I try and run the latest version I get this error every time

    403.4 SSL required

    I am using the parameters -u -p

    Please advise

    ReplyDelete
  23. NYCOMPUTERGUYAugust 26, 2012 at 9:16 AM

    Is there a way to return the hash that occurs after each successful upload? like [2/2] c:\temp\GoogleTest.txt
    - Uploaded: document:13n6lgD0fpqyPzw_eU9QHIAEYiWvp1XGA-p26_KhDbk4

    ReplyDelete

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