Trouble exporting Google Docs to Word

Question

I am currently performing the process of exporting a Google Docs file to a Word document using the following url:

https://docs.google.com/document/export?format=docx&id=ID_DOCUMENTO&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

However, when I open the .docx file generated with Word 2013, the number of pages in the document is less than the number of pages that the Google Docs file has.

For example, my Google Docs file has 79 pages, while the Word file has 75 pages. Comparing the two documents, we can see that the contents of the documents are in different pages.

We therefore ask for your help in validating:

• Alternatives to export files from Google Docs to Word.
• Documentation about to the parameters that are set in the URL "https://docs.google.com/document/export" or similar.
• Any additional information that may be helpful.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Yes; I've had (and reported) this issue before as well. I have not seen it happen with standard text-only Google Docs -- it only happens with highly formatted Google docs that have images and / or complex tables.

My hypothesis is that word wrap, or possibly page breaks get confused in the gDoc to MS Word conversion. It may be that some of the content maybe goes swimming into the header / footer area where it can't be retrieved or viewed?

In any case, I therefore have two workarounds that have worked for me:

A) Skip MS Word completely and export to PDF directly instead.

• Pros: High fidelity with what you see on screen in gDocs and works almost every time. (Note, sometimes it does take up to 2 minutes to generate the PDF; just be patient). In the 1-in-1000 edge cases where the PDF won't generate, clone + download has worked; I've never had both of these methods fail.
• Update: Google has recently (Sept 2020) tweaked their character / line spacing to better match MS Word. It used to be that if you have a page limit, Word's character spacing was more forgiving than Google's. With the update you should no longer lose a line or two per page with this direct-to-PDF method.

2) OR If for some reason you really NEED MS Word, either:

• Export the PDF (from above) to Word using Acrobat Pro OR

• First clone the GDoc, and in the cloned version, remove all images and tables (basically anything that confuses the page breaks and word wrap), download that, then - one by one - copy and paste tables and figures back from the original gDoc.

This whole situation is obviously painful and I hope Google fix it soon; however, given the unpredictability of conversion to Word, our scientific team of 40 people has been pretty happy with skipping MS Office wherever humanly possible. Now that Paperpile.com is on the scene for reference management natively in GDocs, the only remaining features of Word that our team cares about that don't yet have feature parity in gDocs are:

• Wrapping text around tables
• Rotating text in tables
• Custom borders for specific cells (rather than the whole table)

There are dozens of other features that make Google drive a much better choice for us. I've done a full feature comparison here; as of this writing, GSuite bests MS Office by a factor of over 6 to 1. I've also done a related blog/rant here about use of MS Office via Box.com. The bottom line is that Box pairs the worst of all worlds: the inaccessibility you get from a web-only application with the collaboration-hostility of a desktop app wrapped in the lack of searchability you would get with your grandmother’s file cabinet.

Best of luck to you; I hope this helps :)