Drafts 5 to Google Docs

I am new to Drafts. I downloaded Drafts 4 2 days before Drafts 5. I currently have Drafts 5 and signed up for the 7 day trial. For days I’ve tried to come up with a way to actually use Drafts because i really like the concept. Yesterday I figured out the actions and it hit me. Id be able to use this for both business and personal.

I spent a few hours yesterday following premade and community actions to form to my own needs. This is all a learning experience for me since i am no coder. I just about got it all down but the Drafts to Google Docs. I use Google Docs, through google drive, alot with the business and would love to be able to start a draft and append specific docs. Is this possible with Google Docs?

Thanks in advance

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I would suggest using Drafts to share to Workflow, and then running this Workflow - this will trigger an IFTTT action you need to setup (see the screeenshot below), and can then append the file to a Google Doc. The Workflow will ask you for the name of the document you want to save to.

Thank you for your response

I have to apologize, i’m just starting to learn about automation using Workflow, IFTTT and Drafts. When i start this workflow, it start a new Doc, with the same name, and does not append the Doc i want. Not sure if its a setting. But i do not have a diver folder path. If that needs to be filled out, i’m not entirely sure how to get the path address.

I can’t get a Drafts5 / Workflow / IFTT sequence to convert Drafts markdown into a format that reflects that in a Google Docs file. It converts the bullets but not the hashtags and eliminates some line returns. In Workflow I am using the “Convert to RTF from Markdown”, asuming Google Docs would recognize that. Am I wrong? (And … is there a simpler way?!)

___ . ____
For the benefit of those less proficient in these other two amazing apps, Workflow and IFTT, but that require considerable time investment if you want to go beyond the obvious, here are the scripts:

DRAFTS5
1 Step - Run Workflow
Template:
[[draft]]

WORKFLOW
Make Rich Text from Markdown
Set Variable
Variable “RTF text”

Ask for Input “Enter file name”
Set Variable “filename”

Trigger IFFT Applet
Trigger Name “RTF to Google Docs”
2 extra ingredients
Ingredient 1 “filename”
Ingredient 2 “RTF text”

IFTT APPLET
Chose: “create Google Docs” action

Document name: “Extraingredient 1”
Content: “Extraingredient 2”

I suspect IFTTT only be passing the plain text content to Google Docs. I’ve never seen (though that does not mean it does not exist) anything to suggest IFTTT would handle rich text for this. You certainly only get presented with a plain text field when setting up the ‘THAT’ part of the recipe.

In the IFTTT Applet screenshot above, it says “some HTML ok.” You could try passing HTML to it instead of rich text, and see what happens.

To do that, just change your Drafts template to %%[[draft]]%% and eliminate the Workflow rich text step. Drafts can then send HTML to Workflow, and you can see how it looks in Google Docs.

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Hello,
I stumbled upon this thread, as I am looking for a way to append a draft to a Google Doc. However, since the shortcuts app seems to have replaced Workflow, I am unsure how I can get this to work. I am also not a programmer. Does anyone have a good step by step guide to set up a way to append drafts to Google Docs? I’m blind, so I cannot access the screenshots that most sites use to show how things are set-up. I appreciate any direction anyone might be able to provide. I think I need to set-up a webhook with IFTT; I’ve enabled the webhook setting, but am unsure as to what to do after that point.

Drafts can append to plain text files in a lot of different places, and can create new Google Docs using Google Drive actions, but it does not have any features to append to Google Docs.

The Google Doc format is complicated. There is an API, but it has not been integrated into Drafts, and even if integrated might not be super straightforward to do appends, because of the document structures. The create feature that is available is done server side at Google Drive if you upload in a specific manner.

So, if there is a way to do it via outside services like IFTTT, that might be the only good option at this time.

Is there a reason you need it to be a doc, and not a plain text file? Plain text is a lot more flexible to work with.

Appreciate this may not be of direct help, but in Google Sheets (not Google Docs), you can directly reference information held in a text file using the IMPORTDATA function. So, you could append info to a text file in Dropbox and then have it appear in the Google Sheet. Any changes made to the text file get automatically reflected in the Google Sheet, though it can take up to an hour for it to update. As I say, not a direct solution, but may be of some help.

Thank you for the quick reply. I tend to need to do a lot of writing across multiple devices and find Google Docs to work well for allowing me to work on a document no matter where I am. though I’m hoping to get the ability to edit plain text directly one day in Google Docs. I had been using just plain text for a while with Dropbox, but since there is a device limit now I’m finding that a bit more challenging. Thanks again for the reply.

I’m late to the party here, but was searching for an answer to this problem. Here’s a bit of a manual hack:

I do really wish there was a way to create a Drafts action… but you might try this in the mean time.

Does StackEdit allow you to append to existing Google Docs? That was the issue in this particular thread. Drafts can go straight to a new Google Doc from Markdown. See Save as Google Doc example action.