Effortlessly Duplicate Gmail Drafts: Boost Productivity with Google Sheets and Apps Script

2025年1月6日2025年1月8日

“Have you ever wished for a feature to duplicate drafts created in Gmail, to manage your emails more efficiently?”

Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t offer a built-in function to duplicate drafts, so you have to create a new draft each time and manually copy and paste the content.

This process is time-consuming and reduces productivity.

As a solution, you can automate the duplication of drafts by using Google Apps Script.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use Apps Script and Google Sheets to easily duplicate drafts as many times as needed.

This allows you to reuse drafts as templates, streamlining your daily workflow and boosting efficiency.

Example Output

Spreadsheet

Gmail Draft Screen

Specify Draft Emails to Duplicate in Google Sheets
- Column A: Subject (Keyword to identify the draft)
- Column B: Number of copies to duplicate
Run the script to duplicate the draft emails.

When you run the script, the drafts saved in Gmail are automatically duplicated the specified number of times.

This is especially useful when you need to copy frequently used templates.

Steps

STEP

Create a Draft in Gmail

Create the draft email that you want to duplicate.

Recipients (To, Cc, Bcc)
Subject
Body

(The email can be duplicated regardless of whether it is in HTML or plain text format.)

STEP

Prepare the Spreadsheet

Column A: Subject keyword to identify the draft (partial match)

Column B: Number of copies to duplicate

Enter the subject of the email drafts and the number of copies you want to duplicate into the spreadsheet.

The script references a sheet named “Email Draft Duplication” during execution.

Feel free to rename the sheet if needed, but ensure the script reflects the updated sheet name.

STEP

Open Apps Script Editor

Open a Google Spreadsheet and click on “Extensions” in the menu, then “Apps Script” to open the Apps Script editor.

STEP

Create the Script

Since the default function myFunction() {} is present, delete it and replace it with the script below.

function duplicateDraft() {
  const sheetName = "DraftDup"; // Shortened sheet name
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName(sheetName);

  if (!sheet) {
    Logger.log(`The specified sheet "${sheetName}" was not found.`);
    return;
  }

  const data = sheet.getDataRange().getValues(); // Retrieve the data from the sheet

  for (let i = 1; i < data.length; i++) { // Skip the first row (header)
    const subjectKeyword = data[i][0]; // Subject keyword
    const duplicateCount = data[i][1]; // Number of duplicates
    if (!subjectKeyword || !duplicateCount) continue; // Skip if data is missing

    // Search drafts by subject keyword
    const templateQuery = `subject:"${subjectKeyword}" in:drafts`; // Search query for drafts
    const threads = GmailApp.search(templateQuery);

    if (threads.length > 0) {
      const message = threads[0].getMessages()[0]; // Get the first message in the thread
      const subject = message.getSubject();
      const htmlBody = message.getBody(); // Get the HTML body
      const plainBody = message.getPlainBody(); // Get the plain text body
      const to = message.getTo(); // Recipients
      const cc = message.getCc(); // CC
      const bcc = message.getBcc(); // BCC

      const bodyToUse = htmlBody || plainBody;

      for (let j = 0; j < duplicateCount; j++) {
        if (htmlBody) {
          GmailApp.createDraft(to, subject, '', { htmlBody: bodyToUse, cc: cc, bcc: bcc });
        } else {
          GmailApp.createDraft(to, subject, bodyToUse, { cc: cc, bcc: bcc });
        }
      }
      Logger.log(`Draft duplicated: ${subject} × ${duplicateCount} times`);
    } else {
      Logger.log(`No drafts found matching the subject: "${subjectKeyword}"`);
    }
  }
}