Copy text from a protected Google doc
13 October, 2024In Google Docs you can "protect" a doc so that it can't be printed, shared or have text copied.
For everyone except the author this is quite annoying, and so this is one way you can copy text out of a protected document if you are sent one.
These instructions are for a desktop version of Chrome. Firefox will also work, but I haven't tried any of this on mobile.
- Load your Google doc as normal
- Disable JavaScript in the browser by clicking the little icon to the left of the URL that looks like circles and lines to get a page of settings which will open in a new tab - change the Javascript setting to "block"
- Return to your Google doc tab
- Change the URL
- remove "/edit" and anything after it
- Add "/mobilebasic" to end of the URL
- You can now highlight and copy any text out of the document!
There are other approaches to this, including generating screenshots/photos and feeding them through image-to-text processors, but the approach above always works for me. Have fun!