Google Drive allows only the primary user to download directly from the Drive. Say you are logged in with multiple account U0, U1, U2, U3. U0 (look in your address bar) will be your primary account. The Google drive limits download for shared files, but no worries, because it. If you still can't access a file after 24 hours, contact your domain administrator ).

  1. Why Can't I Download From Google Drive
  2. Why Cant I Download From Google Drive To Computer
  3. Why Cant I Download From Google Drive To Pc
  • Download files from Google Drive using a computer or an Android device. Go to drive.google.com. Click a file to download. (To download multiple files, press Shift or Ctrl while clicking other files.) Right-click and click Download. Note: Dragging a file from Google Drive to your desktop won’t download it. Frequently asked questions.
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I am working on application where i take a backup of some user's data to Google drive and in a later time i restore them.

The problem is that the files created and restored with no problems except that i can't see any progress, if i am uploading a large file it keep doing that in the background and can't notify the user that there is some operation happening in the background.

here is a snippet from the method i am using

The problem is that if i'am uploading 3 files, the Log.d(TAG,Log.d(TAG, 'Created a file with content: ' + result.getDriveFile().getDriveId()); is called very quickly after each others, and the actual files keep uploading in the background.

Why Cant I Download From Google Drive

So can anyone tell me how to get real status of the uploading files in the background?

Why Can't I Download From Google Drive

Mohamed Zakaria El-ZoghbiMohamed Zakaria El-Zoghbi

1 Answer

You need to add progress listeners which will listen to download or upload progress.

For uploading, you can use the MediaHttpUploaderProgressListener implementation given in Implementation details

For downloading, you can attach a DownloadProgressListener to inform users of the download progress in a ProgressDialog. As shown in Opening the file contents specifically in listening to the download progress, open the file contents with a DownloadProgressListener.

Solutions given in these SO post - Check progress for Upload & Download (Google Drive API for Android or Java) and How to show uploading to Google Drive progress in my android App? might help too.

Community
TeyamTeyam

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I have a very large Google Docs document which can not be exported to PDF*, but I can download it in all the other supported formats, which unfortunately do not fit my needs.

Why Cant I Download From Google Drive To Computer

What are the limitations of downloading a Google Docs document as a PDF, why can't I export it into this format? (But why can I download it as a huge, 500 MB sized RTF?)

I didn't find any relevant stuff in the official documentations.

*: all the 4 of us who have access to this document tried with different Google accounts, same results.

I have a huge Google Docs document (shared with a team) containing 168 pages, multiple images, lots of equations, drawings, tables, etc.
When I want to download the whole document as a PDF(clicking 'Download as' >'PDF Document (.pdf)'), the browser (doesn't matter which one of the popular browsers) starts to show the loading icon in the tab header (meaning it is processing the request), but about a minute later, it returns an '500 OK' HTTP Status Code (BTW not the usual '500 Internal Server Error', '500 OK' instead), which means it could not export the document to PDF.

Why? I don't think the reason is a size limit, because I can download the whole document in ALL the other currently supported formats such as .docx, .odt, .rtf, .txt, .html, and for example the downloaded .rtf file is 519 MB. (Really! The .docx format from the same document is only 71.8 MB, and the .odt is 48.7 MB.)BUT when I cut this document down to about 50 pages, I CAN download it as PDF!

What are the limitations for downloading a Google Docs document as PDF?
Why can't I export this document to PDF?

Problematic workarounds

There are some workarounds, although unfortunately they produce other problems:

  • if I split this document into at least 3 parts as separate documents, I CAN download the whole thing as PDF
    • it is obvious that it is a very uncomfortable solution (we want to edit the document as ONE large doc.), and this way all three documents should have separate table of contents part
  • downloading the document in .odt (OpenDocument Text) or HTML format:
    • this is NOT a good solution in my case, because the equations get downloaded as images, and they get messed up if they contain special characters which are NOT part of the equation toolbar (like bowtie symbol (U+22C8) for natural joins in relational algebra) or accented characters (á, é, í, etc.), and get substituted by multiple question marks (?). Here's an example:
      • equation in Google Docs (correct):
      • equation in .odt or HTML format (incorrect and uglier):
      • equation in Google Docs:
      • equation in .odt or HTML format (incorrect and uglier):
    • BTW this is exactly how these equations look like when I view the document from a tablet or a mobile phone (buggy appearance)
  • downloading the document in .docx (MS Office) format:
    • in some cases, indentations and spacings get messed up and font types get changed for some reason
    • but without a doubt, this produces the most acceptable result

Here's the output of the browser's developer console when such a request is sent:

Sorry for being so verbose, I wanted to share all the information I could find out.

Why Cant I Download From Google Drive To Pc

Sk8erPeterSk8erPeter

8 Answers

I just ran head-first into this very same wall. I've basically spent a couple of weeks with Inventor and Google Docs, creating a 292 page, screenshot rich, compendium / tutorial for the CAD class that I'm going to teach this semester. And I can't download it as a pdf. However, I did find another workaround that is not mentioned above:

Open the 'Print' dialog. Choose the print to local pdf option. Then section off your document, I did 3 sections: pages 1-100, pages 101-200 and pages 201-292. Worked like a charm, and then I just did a pdf merge afterwards. Incredibly annoying(!) but still quite workable.

EeronEeron

There is not an official published limit about exporting Google Documents to PDF.

At this time there isn't an official document regarding the limits of the conversion of a Google Document to PDF, but there are several reports regarding this in the official Google Docs Help Forum.

Note: Google Documents limit is 1.02 million of characters. Text files to be converted to Google Document format should not exceed 50MB.

To tell Google that you would like that they add a feature or that they have something to document or to fix on their side, open the related document and submit your feedback through Help > Report a problem.

Workarounds

As the OP already mentioned splitting the document in three parts works in the case exposed, but this isn't deterministic, so in other cases the number of parts could be different, by other side, the size of the parts, in terms of pages, could not be the same for each part as it's very likely that it will dependent on the content.

More alternatives

Export the document to another format and use a third party PDF conversion software to convert the resulting file. Each file format have their own caveats, as was exposed by the OP, RTF file format results in big files, DOCX requires fixings, HTML and ODT files formats doesn't convert equations correctly.

Use the browser Print > Save as PDF

Sobre browsers, like Chrome have built-in 'PDF printer'. Apparently this use a different a algorithm and different resources.

Try disabling Hardware acceleration

There are some reports that disabling the browser Hardware Acceleration feature solves this kind of problems.

RubénRubén

For me downloading as PDF seems to be an issue with Chrome. I tried Edge instead and it worked.

royroy

Easy if you have a local copy of MS Word. Download as .docx, open in Word and save as PDF.

BenjoBenjo

I have consistently had this issue for over a year. Any Google Doc I have that is over about 10 pages won't download as a PDF within Chrome, no matter what I do.

Solution: use Firefox to download the PDF.

If I open the same Google Doc in Firefox and request the PDF, it works consistently with no issue. It takes a few seconds to generate, but I have never had a problem getting the PDF.

(And hey, maybe it will also work in Edge, Safari, Netscape, AOL Browser, Internet Explorer 1, 2, 3?)

I do find it funny that Google Docs doesn't work well with Google Chrome. :-)

user193597user193597

Someone else mentioned this already, but I got it to work as follows:

Open the document an load all pages.Ctrl + P (or press print it the browser)Select instead of 'print as pdf' 'save as pdf'wait for your browser to create it and press save.......

user204836user204836

I had the very same problem having written a novel (371 pages - oof I know) and it wouldn't come out as a pdf for me, HOWEVER... there is one simple way to overcome this. Simply just press ctrl+p (to print, I know, but keep reading) and, instead of printing it, simply just press 'save as pdf' in the top left corner of the popup screen - I'm sorry if this doesn't work for you, but it worked like a charm for me!

Elsie SteaneElsie Steane

Head to File>Print>Open PDF In Preview and then just save it out onto your Desktop from Preview.

Wood SimmonsWood Simmons

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