title: Copy an existing Drive file into the appdata folder
body: <p>I am attempting to use the new <a href="https://developers.google.com/drive/appdata" rel="nofollow">Application Data</a> folder in the Drive SDK, but rather than creating a new file as the sample code shows, I wish to create a copy of a template file which the user selects. My template files are Google-editable spreadsheets held within a specific Drive account and are world-readable, with their IDs configured in my application.</p>
  
  <p>I first tried the copy by specifying <code>appdata</code> as a parent ID in the body of the <a href="https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/copy" rel="nofollow">copy request</a>, as follows</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
    "title": "New file",
    "parents": 
    [
      {
        "id": "appdata"
      }
    ]
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this produced a 403 error with the text</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Only folders or files with content stored in Drive are allowed within the appdata folder</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So I tried adding <code>root</code> as a second parent in the <code>parents</code> array, as follows</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
    "title": "New file",
    "parents": 
    [
      {
        "id": "appdata"
      },
      {
        "id": "root"
      }
    ]
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This fails again with a 403, but a slightly different error</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Method not supported for appdata contents</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I have also tried updating the <code>parents</code> property of the new file after creation, and by inserting a new value into the parents entity of the newly-created file, both of which yield the same 'Method not supported' error.</p>
  
  <p>So my question is, is it possible to create a copy of an existing field held in Drive, within a user's appdata folder? The fact that this consistently fails suggests not and that I may have to use the user's normal storage, but I would like to use the appdata folder if possible to separate my app's content from their general Drive files.</p>