I am looking to find out if it is POSSIBLE to restrict EDITORS from downloading, copying or printing a Google sheet or other documents in a Google Drive. We share sheets/documents with our customers so they can fill in the details. For that we need to make them EDITORS (so they can edit and even invite others to the party). I know that we can restrict COMMENTERS and VIEWERS from downloading, but in our case we need to prevent EDITORS.

We have a LOT of intellectual property in our sheets (custom formulas and approaches), and we would like to be able to prevent people from simply downloading it. As I understand it this SHOULD be possible using the Google Drive API, but I have not been able to figure out how to do it, yet. Looking at the API it obliquely says it MAY be possible, but it is not clear :-(

Direction, or sample code, would be VERY much appreciated.

TIA

CodePudding user response：

It's not possible to restrict editors from downloading files. The documentation mentions that only commenters and viewers can be prevented from this. Then in the API docs concerning permissions and their definitions you will see that there's nothing controlling downloads either. This is just a UI change.

If you think about it, the reason is clear: Even if you manage to stop direct downloads, to anyone with at least read access to the file or API this is just a minor inconvenience. They can still read all the content and metadata from the API and replicate the file perfectly. Even viewers with copy disabled can still read the formulas from the formula bar. Sharing the Sheets file is inherently unsafe if you have confidential data in it, since a determined attacker can still get all your trade secrets easily. You're only supposed to share these files with trusted users.

My suggestion is to take a different approach. Do not share the Sheets file at all and use something else as intermediary to request data from your customers. For example:

• Create a Google Form to save the responses to a Sheet. Your customers will only need to fill out the form and the sheet will be filled with data that you can handle on your side.
• If you need the users to also view some information in the Sheet before filling out their info you can build an Apps Script Web App that displays only the plain data that you need to show them. With this you can hide the formulas and other sensitive information. Using templates and server functions you can allow the users to interface with the Sheet data similarly to how they do it now, but with a more restricted view. You could even allow them to edit only the data you want them to. This requires more work and is starting to delve into web development, but It's much easier than a fully fledged website since the hosting and interfacing with APIs is handled by Apps Script.
• You could just create your own application and use the Sheets API to read and write data from the Sheet. This is pretty much the previous suggestion but much harder, though in the end it will give you more flexibility.

The bottom line is that sharing your Sheet in any way is akin to giving your users full database read or write access, and there's no single setting that can prevent that. Your best bet is to avoid sharing these files and use a different method to request user data.