When you publish a Google document, presentation, or spreadsheet to the web, anyone who has the URL to your publication can view it no matter what visibility option you’ve chosen – private, anyone with the link, or public.
Visibility options don’t apply to a publication because the publication isn’t the original item but a separate webpage version. In other words, by publishing a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation, you’re creating a copy of it that’s a unique webpage with its own public URL.
| When you publish to the web… | …a copy of your original item is published as a distinct, lightweight webpage. |
Private Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations published to the web
Not sure how a file with a “private” visibility option can be published to the web? Here’s an example that may help:
You’re working on an event flyer in Google Docs that’s set to the “private” visibility option and shared only with a small committee of people. Just before the event, you publish your document to the web and post a link to your now published flyer on a variety of websites. Anyone who comes across the link can visit the published web version; however, only committee members you’ve invited to view or edit the private document will have access to the original.
