Google Drive Document Access

Overview

Search for and download documents from Google Drive using rclone. Google Docs are automatically exported as Markdown for easy reading and processing.

Scripts are located at scripts/.

Reference Documentation:

• scripts/ — Shell scripts for search, download, and sync operations
• digital-science-reference.md — Digital Science documentation links

Authentication: See the Authentication section in digital-science-reference.md for rclone setup. The remote must be named gdrive.

Quick Start

# Check rclone is configured
./scripts/check_rclone.sh

# Search for files
./scripts/search_gdrive.sh "meeting notes"

# Search shared files
./scripts/search_gdrive.sh "standup" --shared

# Download a file (exports Google Docs as Markdown)
./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Documents/Report" ./output

# Download by file ID
./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --id "FILE_ID" ./output

# Download matching shared files
./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --shared --include "pattern*" ./output

Common Tasks

Task	Command
Check setup	./scripts/check_rclone.sh
Search files	./scripts/search_gdrive.sh "pattern"
Search shared files	./scripts/search_gdrive.sh "pattern" --shared
Download file	./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "path/to/file" ./output
Download by ID	./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --id "FILE_ID" ./output
Download folder	./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Folder" ./output --bulk
Download shared files	./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --shared --include "pattern*" ./output
Limit downloads	./scripts/download_gdrive.sh --shared --include "pattern*" ./output --limit 20

Export Formats

Google Docs can be exported in different formats:

Format	Flag	Use Case
Markdown	--format md (default)	Easy reading and processing
Word	--format docx	Office compatibility
PDF	--format pdf	Final documents
Plain text	--format txt	Minimal formatting
HTML	--format html	Web content

Example: ./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Report" ./output --format docx

File ID Extraction

Extract file IDs from Google Drive URLs:

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/edit → use FILE_ID
• https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/view → use FILE_ID

Preview Before Download

Use dry-run to see what would be downloaded:

./scripts/download_gdrive.sh "Large Folder" ./output --bulk --dry-run

Direct rclone Commands

For advanced use cases:

rclone ls gdrive:"Documents"           # List files
rclone lsjson gdrive:"path" --no-traverse  # Get file info as JSON
rclone sync gdrive:"Source" ./local --drive-export-formats md  # Sync folder

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
"remote not configured"	Run rclone config to set up gdrive remote
"Cannot connect"	Run rclone config reconnect gdrive:
Empty search results	Check path spelling; try searching from root
File not downloading	Verify file permissions; check if file is in Trash
Shared files not found	Use --shared flag
Too many files	Use --limit N to download only N most recent