I’ve been searching through the Google Docs API documentation but can’t find any official method to retrieve who a comment is assigned to. The documentation doesn’t seem to cover getting assignee details for comments.
I’m wondering if anyone has found a way to extract the assignee’s name or email address from comments in Google Docs. Are there any unofficial methods or creative solutions that might work for this? I need to programmatically access this information for a project I’m working on.
Has anyone successfully implemented something like this before? Any suggestions would be helpful.
Been fighting Google’s API limits for years - this one’s especially frustrating. The manual fixes people mentioned work, but they’re hacky and break whenever Google updates something.
I hit this same issue last month and ended up automating it. Skip the multiple APIs and parsing headaches - I built a workflow that watches Google Docs comments live and grabs all assignee data automatically.
It connects to Google Docs, pulls comment data (including assignee info the regular API can’t see), and sends it wherever you need it. 10-minute setup, handles all the API mess for you.
Way better than manually cross-referencing timestamps and revision histories. Scales automatically when you add more docs too.
Latenode works great for this - handles Google Docs integration smoothly and you don’t have to write parsing logic: https://latenode.com
Hit the same wall building a compliance tracker. Google Workspace Add-ons can access way more than the regular REST API - that’s your answer. You’ll need workspace admin permissions to deploy, but then you can use DocumentApp service in Apps Script to grab comment objects with assignee references. Add-ons run inside Google’s environment, so they skip the restrictions that block external apps. I pulled assignee data by looping through comment threads and grabbing the user objects tied to each comment. Way more reliable than web scraping and you don’t need those messy timestamp workarounds people keep suggesting.
yeah, i get it, google’s api is really terrible for this. i ended up scraping the web version using puppeteer too - it’s not pretty but it does the trick. just automate a browser to open the doc and grab assignee info straight from comment bubbles. total hack, but it works when their api fails.
Hit this same wall last year building an internal review system. The Google Docs API doesn’t give you comment assignee info directly, which is a frustrating oversight. I managed to work around it by integrating the Comments API with the People API. Although you can’t directly retrieve assignee data from comments, you can analyze comment replies to identify user mentions or activity patterns. Be cautious, as this method requires careful parsing and isn’t foolproof. Additionally, I found that using Google Apps Script within the document provided better access to deeper document properties, which helped pull assignee relationships more effectively, but it needs to be run from within Google Workspace.
yeah, I feel you on this! it’s really frustating. tbh, I had to poke around too and found the Drive API was more useful for this kinda stuff. give it a shot, you might find what you’re lookin for!
I hit this exact problem on a document workflow project. Google doesn’t expose comment assignee data through their standard API - pretty annoying oversight if you ask me. Here’s what actually worked: I combined the Comments API with revision history data. Pull the comments through the API, then cross-reference the timestamps with document revisions to spot user interaction patterns. It’s indirect, but I could map comment assignments by tracking who responded to which threads and when. Takes extra logic to parse the relationships, but it’s way more reliable than trying to pull assignee info directly from comment metadata (which just isn’t there).
Hit this same wall building document analytics for our team. Google locks down assignee data in their API for privacy - annoying but makes sense. Here’s what worked: combine the Google Admin SDK with the Comments API if you’ve got workspace admin access. Pull comment metadata, then match it against user activity logs from Admin Reports API. You’ll see who’s touching which comments without dealing with browser automation or hacky parsing. Catch is you need admin permissions and it only works in managed Google Workspace - won’t work on personal accounts.