Google Docs: Download images from a document – this is how you can easily save all media

The online word processing Google Docs offers users many options for creating and editing documents, often using embedded images. But this can be a nasty surprise, because Google Docs does not offer an official way to download these images. We'll show you how you can access the images anyway.

Anyone who has ever tried to download an image embedded in a Google Docs document may have had a nasty surprise – because it is simply not possible. The context menu for images is well-filled, but downloading is not included. The obvious copying option is offered, but only works within the document and does not allow pasting outside of Google Docs.

Many users will therefore probably use the screenshot method. This achieves the goal, but can also result in a loss of quality, does not provide you with the image in full size and without transparency. If you are in a hurry, in the worst case scenario the grabbers displayed by Google Docs will still be around the image or even the cursor. This is not necessarily the best solution either. Hobbyists could try to get the image using the browser's developer tools, but this is a lot of fiddling, requires a lot of effort and is not something that other users should be expected to do.

But there is a good way to extract one or more images from Google Docs very easily: All you have to do is download the entire document in which the image or images are embedded. This way you get the original image as it is stored on the Google Docs servers.