Embed Google Docs
In Activity 6-C-2, you will embed a Google Spreadsheet in the class wiki.
First, publish your spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet needs to be publicly visible for your classmates and facilitators to be able to see it.
- When you are ready to embed your spreadsheet, click Share, then Publish as a Web Page.
- Click Start Publishing. The link for your published spreadsheet will appear below.
Next, embed the spreadsheet on the wiki.
- On the wiki page where your spreadsheet will be embedded, click Edit.
- In the Wikispaces Editor toolbar, click Embed Widget.
- Select Other HTML.
- Paste this code in the widget box:
<iframe src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=############" width=850 height=800></iframe>
- In the code you just pasted, replace all the number signs in the code with the key from your spreadsheet (leaving the rest of the code intact). The key is everything that comes after key= in the URL of your spreadsheet. This will be a series of numbers and letters like pncb-Aiu-ogJzqs9MvG49EA.
- Your code should look like this, but with your spreadsheet key instead of this sample:
<iframe src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pncb-Aiu-ogJzqs9MvG49EA" width=850 height=800></iframe>
- Click Preview to check that it worked. Click Close Preview.
- If you need to make any adjustments or correct the link, do that now.
- Click Save. Your spreadsheet will appear as a gray box labeled "media" while you are editing the page.
- Click Save in the Wikispaces editor toolbar to save the wiki page.
If you need to make any changes in your spreadsheet, editing should be done within Google Spreadsheets; you can't edit the file from within the wiki.
This same process works with Google Docs or Presentations; just use the right pattern for those files.
- For Google Docs, the URL follows this pattern:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=############
- For Google Presentations, use the embed code provided (not just the public URL):
<iframe src='EmbedSlideshow?docid=############' frameborder='0' width='410' height='342'></iframe>
- Play with the width and height variables if the size isn't right. Smaller numbers result in smaller embedded documents; larger numbers give you more space to see your document.
Experiment with other applications too; you may discover that this is an effective way to embed other multimedia content that doesn't otherwise work within the wiki.
Troubleshooting
If you're having problems embedding your timeline in the wiki, check these tips for troubleshooting.
- Make sure when you post the key for your document that you don't accidentally delete the quotation mark at the end. "http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pncb-Aiu-ogJzqs9MvG49EA" is right, but "http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pncb-Aiu-ogJzqs9MvG49EA won't work.
- Check the width and height. The code given here has width=850 and height=800. You can change that yourself though. For example, if you're having trouble seeing the far right column in your timeline, you might need to make it wider. Try changing the width from 850 to 1000. This may take some trial and error to get it right, so use the Preview option to make the process faster. If you increase the width, it is likely that you will see a horizontal scrollbar; this is normal.
- Double check your code against the sample. Remember that the code is very literal; if you have a backslash instead of a forward slash or elements in the wrong order, your timeline may not work.
- Make sure that you created a new page on the wiki before trying to embed the spreadsheet. Creating a new page prevents participants from editing over each other, and the embedded documents usually work best one to a page.
- If all else fails, try deleting the entire embedded widget and just recreating it. Sometimes it is easier with code like this to start from scratch than to find an error and fix it.
- If you're still having trouble, try the sources available to you for help. This includes the Wikispaces Help, search engines, the Questions forum within this course, your PLC and/or PLN, and your facilitator.