Google-docs – How to make URLs automatically hyperlinked on a web-published Google Docs

google docslinks

When I publish Google Docs to the web like this: https://docs.google.comView?id=dc7gj86r_22pv9qqffp I can manually turn a URL into a hyperlink as I did on the first two, but how can I make Google Docs automatically turn the URLs in my text into hyperlinks when the text is published as a web page?

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Best Answer

_{It seems that right now, in 2018, it's the default behavior.}

The link detection gets triggered when you enter a space or press enter after pasting or writing the URL.
So, if you paste a URL that has space at the end of it - it won't automatically detect it (at least not at first), and will treat it as simple text. For example "https://google.com ".

You can verify this setting under Tools --> Preferences:

Short answer

At this time it's not possible to set new custom URL mapping for Google Docs editors.

Explanation

Google Docs editors URL format change was announced at the beginning of 2015. If the Google Apps administrator set the URL mapping before the change were rolled out to the organization it should continue to work but if he didn't he can't create a custom URL mapping for Google Docs editors:

Alternative

None that I know about.

References

Google Docs editors URL format change - Google Apps update alerts

Google Docs – Paste Href Tag as Link

There are no tricks, just built-in tools and scripts.

Manual conversion

To turn http://example.com into http://example.com, select it and press Ctrl-K (or right-click and choose Link).

This will be a hassle if you pasted in several dozens of these. Then a script is preferable.

Conversion with a script

I wrote two functions, for two different conversions:

<a href="http://example.com">link text</a> to <a href="http://example.com">link text</a>
<a href="http://example.com">link text</a> to link text

Both are added to the document menu by the onOpen function.

The approach is the same in both cases, the details vary in step 3.

Use Body.findText method to find the elements containing the text of interest. (This search method has some support of regular expressions, although not much.)
Obtain the text string from each matching element: .getElement().asText().getText()
Use the JavaScript regex engine to search (and substitute if necessary).
Finally, linkify by using Text.setLinkUrl method.

function linkify() {
  var body = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getBody();
  var range = body.findText("<a[^<]*</a>");
  while (range) {  
    var nextRange = body.findText("<a[^<]*</a>", range);
    var elem = range.getElement().asText();
    var str = elem.getText();
    var re = /href=(\W)(.*?)\1/g;
    var result = re.exec(str); 
    while (result) {
      var index = result.index; 
      var url = result[2]; 
      elem.setLinkUrl(index+6, index+url.length+5, url);
      result = re.exec(str);
    }
    range = nextRange;
  }
}

function replaceWithLink() {
  var body = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument().getBody();
  var range = body.findText("<a[^<]*</a>");
  while (range) {  
    var nextRange = body.findText("<a[^<]*</a>", range);
    var elem = range.getElement().asText();
    var str = elem.getText();
    var result = /<a[^<]*<\/a>/.exec(str); 
    while (result) {
      var link = result[0];
      var index = result.index;
      var url = /href=(\W)(.*)\1/.exec(link)[2];
      var text = />(.*)</.exec(link)[1];
      elem.replaceText(link, text);
      elem.setLinkUrl(index, index+text.length-1, url);
      str = str.replace(link, text);
      result = /<a[^<]*<\/a>/.exec(str);
    }
    range = nextRange;
  }
}

function onOpen() {
  DocumentApp.getUi()
             .createMenu('Custom')
             .addItem('Recognize href as a link', 'linkify')
             .addItem('Replace <a> elements with links', 'replaceWithLink')
             .addToUi();
}