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How to Overwrite Files in Google Drive

The Save Emails Google add-on offers an option to overwrite existing files in Google Drive instead of creating a new file.

For instance, a sales company receives disk backups in zip format every midnight in their Gmail account. They use the add-on to automatically download these file attachments to a specific folder in Google Drive. However, instead of creating multiple copies of the backup file, they just want the program to overwrite the existing file and not create a new file.

Overwrite Files in Google Drive

Open your Google Spreadsheet > Extensions > Create Workflow (or modify an existing one), and jump to the Configurations section.

In this section, you will find an option β€˜Overwrite existing files in Google Drive’. Check this option to enable this feature. Please note that the Save Emails add-on will only match file names based on their name before overwriting them in Google Drive.

Now if you receive another email attachment with the same name as the one that already exists in the current folder, the add-on will simply replace the file content without changing the name, location or description of the file. Even the old Google Drive file links would continue to work.