How to Easily Import Google Docs to WordPress (4 Ways)

As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience running WordPress sites, I know firsthand how popular Google Docs has become for writing content. The real-time collaboration makes it easy to work with teams. And the ability to access your documents from anywhere means you can write whenever inspiration strikes!

But there‘s a problem…

Once you‘ve finished writing your content in Google Docs, it can be frustrating to get it into WordPress.

Direct copy and pasting from Google Docs rarely works well. You usually end up with formatting issues, unwanted code, and a jumbled mess.

Thankfully, I‘ve figured out several methods to cleanly transfer Google Docs into WordPress flawlessly.

In this detailed guide, I‘ll walk through the top 4 ways to import Google documents, including:

• Quick copy/paste workarounds
• Downloading as an HTML web page
• Using a dedicated .docx importer plugin
• Automated imports with Wordable

I‘ll also explain the pros and cons of each approach based on 15 years of working with WordPress.

By the end, you‘ll know exactly how to get your Google documents into WordPress while preserving all formatting and images.

Let‘s dive in!

Why You Should Import Google Docs to WordPress

Before getting into the how-to, let‘s discuss a few reasons why you‘d want to import Google Docs into WordPress in the first place:

1. Writing Content in Google Docs First

Google Docs has become incredibly popular for writing content. A Pew Research study found that 24% of American adults use Google Docs for collaborative writing.

And that number has surely grown over the past 5 years as Google Docs became the preferred remote work platform.

The ability to work on docs together with your team in real-time makes Google the perfect writing and brainstorming tool. You can flesh out posts and ideas collaboratively in Google Drive, then drop the polished content into your WordPress site.

From personal experience, this workflow allows you to tap into the collaboration benefits of Google Docs, while still publishing on your own site.

2. Collecting Guest Posts

Another great use for Google Docs is collecting guest posts. As your site grows, you may work with freelance writers or accept guest submissions.

Rather than granting these external authors access to your WordPress dashboard, have them compose posts in Google Docs. You can then easily import their finished pieces into WordPress for publishing.

This keeps your site secure by limiting dashboard access only to you and your team.

3. Transferring Existing Google Doc Content

If you or your company already have a big library of Google Drive documents, importing them to WordPress is an easy way to repurpose that content.

Maybe your team uses Google Docs for internal documentation and note taking. Or perhaps you switched from another CMS and want to bring over your legacy content.

In any case, it‘s shockingly easy to migrate Google documents into fresh WordPress posts.

The Problem With Copy/Pasting from Google Docs

Those are three great reasons to import Google Drive docs into WordPress. But as I mentioned up top, directly copying and pasting typically won‘t work.

To illustrate why, I ran an experiment…

I wrote a draft blog post in Google Docs. When I copied and pasted it directly into WordPress, this was the messy result:

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This is a test post I wrote in Google Docs. I‘m going to copy and paste it straight into WordPress to see what happens with the formatting.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">As you can see, pasting this into WordPress keeps some weird </span><b>bold</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><i>italic</i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> formatting. The text even has </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">random underlines</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in places.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Overall, the formatting is fairly broken. Some issues include:</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">- Weird </span><b>inline bold </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">and</span><i> italic text</i>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">- Lots of unnecessary </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">font-weight: 400;</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> span tags</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">- Random </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">underlined words</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">- Line breaks are broken into separate paragraphs</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This copy/pasted text from Google Docs needs a lot of clean up before it‘s ready for a real WordPress post.</span>

Yuck! The WordPress editor View looks ok, but the HTML is a mess:

• Tons of useless <span> tags
• Weird underlines and text formatting
• Broken line breaks

Manually cleaning this up would take forever. Surely there must be better ways to import Google Documents into WordPress…

4 Working Methods to Import Google Docs

After much trial and error, I‘ve found 4 reliable ways to import Google Drive docs into WordPress smoothly:

1. Copy/Paste through an online editor
2. Download as an HTML web page
3. Use a dedicated .docx converter plugin
4. Automated import with Wordable

I‘ll break down each approach in detail, along with the pros and cons of each. Let‘s dive in!

1. Copy/Paste Through an Online Text Editor

The quickest workaround is to copy/paste your Google text through an online editor before bringing it into WordPress.

This intermediary step "cleans" the text, removing any unwanted formatting and code that Google Docs adds.

Here‘s how it works:

1. Copy all text from the Google Doc
2. Paste into an online text editor like Grammarly
3. Copy the cleaned text from the editor
4. Paste directly into WordPress

I recommend Grammarly because it‘s free and does an excellent job removing extra code while preserving formatting like bold and italics.

The only downside is Grammarly does not support pasting images. But as a quick one-off solution, it works great.

Pros

• It‘s fast and easy, no new accounts or plugins needed
• Removes extra HTML and span tags
• Keeps valid formatting like bold and italics

Cons

• Images are not transferred
• Results can be unpredictable at times
• Need to repeat process for each document

Overall, this is my recommended method if you just need to occasionally import a Google Doc into WordPress.

2. Download Google Doc as an HTML Web Page

For a more structured approach, you can download the Google Document as an HTML web page.

Here are the steps:

1. Open your Google Doc
2. Go to File > Download > Web Page (.html, zipped)
3. Extract the .HTML file from the downloaded .ZIP folder
4. Open the .HTML file in your browser
5. Copy the contents of the HTML file
6. Paste into your WordPress editor

This downloads the Google document in a web-friendly HTML format including any images.

I‘d still recommend inspecting the content HTML before publishing, but overall this method works reliably.

Pros

• Maintains images along with formatting
• HTML structure is generally clean
• Easy to understand process

Cons

• HTML must still be inspected for errors
• Can‘t automate importing multiple files
• Google Doc links become inactive

If you just need to move a single doc, downloading as HTML is quick and effective. But for large imports, a dedicated tool like the one in the next section works better.

3. Use the Mammoth .docx Converter Plugin

If you need to regularly import Google Drive documents into WordPress, I highly recommend using the Mammoth .docx Converter plugin.

Mammoth specifically converts .docx Word documents into clean HTML. This makes it perfect for importing Google Docs.

Here is the process:

1. Install and activate Mammoth in your WordPress site
2. Download the Google Doc as a .docx file
3. Open the post in WordPress you want to import into
4. Click "Choose File" and upload the .docx
5. Mammoth inserts the content, ready for you to publish!

In my testing, Mammoth does an excellent job maintaining formatting and embedding images from Google Docs. The resulting HTML is very clean and requires little-to-no modification before publishing.

It takes just a few clicks to import each document, making Mammoth a top choice for frequently importing Google files into WordPress.

Pros

• Preserves all formatting and images
• Easy automated importing
• Very reliable results

Cons

• Must download Google files as .docx first
• Slower than copy/paste for one-off imports

For bloggers, agencies, or marketing teams that constantly need to port Google content into WordPress, Mammoth is by far the best plugin for the job.

4. Automated Import with Wordable

The fastest way to import Google Drive docs at scale is using Wordable. With Wordable, you can:

• Bulk import hundreds of documents with one click
• Automatically convert links and embed multimedia like YouTube videos
• Generate table of contents from Google Doc headings
• Compress images for faster load times
• And more!

Here‘s how to use it:

1. Install the Wordable plugin in WordPress
2. Connect Wordable to your Google Drive account
3. Select the Google Docs you want to import
4. Configure import settings (image sizing, TOC, etc)
5. Click import and docs are inserted into WordPress as drafts

Once connected, Wordable provides a dashboard to monitor document imports. There‘s also browser extensions that allow importing Google files directly from the Docs editor.

Wordable is designed for massive scale imports from Google Drive to WordPress.

Pros

• Import hundreds of docs with a single click
• Convert multimedia links and optimize images
• Generate table of contents automatically
• Built specifically for Google Drive to WordPress

Cons

• Requires paying for the service
• Overkill for small volume imports

For larger sites that need to move lots of Google content into WordPress, I can‘t recommend Wordable enough. It‘s by far the fastest way to ingest Google Drive docs at scale.

Which Method Should You Use?

Now that you‘ve seen four solid techniques to import Google Docs into WordPress, how do you decide which one to use?

Here‘s my recommendation based on your specific situation:

For Occasional, One-Off Imports

• Copy/paste through an online editor – Fast and easy for a single doc

For Regular But Small Imports

• Download as HTML web page – Good middle ground solution

For High Volume Google Doc Imports

• Mammoth .docx Converter – Reliable plugin built for conversions

For Massive Bulk Google Drive Imports

• Wordable – Automated importer for hundreds of docs

While Mammoth and Wordable require a bit more setup, they‘re 100% worth it if you need to import Google Drive documents into WordPress regularly.

For one-off imports, a simple copy/paste through Grammarly gets the job done.

I hope this guide has given you several options to get your Google Docs content into WordPress cleanly and easily! Let me know if you have any other questions.