How to Create a PDF
Let’s say you want to add an article to your WordPress site. You want it to print “just right”, so simply pasting the content into a new page or post won’t work. What’s the best solution? Create a PDF file and upload it to your site. Don’t know how to do that? Here is a simple guide.
There are two stages to add PDF files to your pages.
- Make the PDF (if your file is already in PDF format you can skip to stage 2).
- Upload the PDF to WordPress.
Here is a quick guide:
Mac Instructions:
- Open your document in Microsoft Word (or whatever word processor you use).
- Go to file -> print.
- Click PDF (Instead of selecting your default printer).
- Click Print -> Save as PDF.
- Pick a file name and location for your new PDF (The easiest place to find the file is either in Documents or on your desktop).
- Open the PDF in Preview to make sure the PDF looks just right.
- You’re done.
Windows Instructions:
- Download CutePDF (free).
- Install CutePDF (you may need to reboot your computer).
- Open your document in Microsoft Word (or whatever word processor you use).
- Go to file -> print.
- Select the CutePDF printer (Instead of selecting your default printer).
- Click “Print”.
- Pick a file name and location for your new PDF (The easiest place to find the file is either in “My Documents” or on your desktop).
- Open the PDF in Acrobat Reader to make sure the PDF looks just right.
- You’re done.
Click here for stage 2 – uploading the file to WordPress.
Questions? Leave us a comment.
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Well….. you could do that. Or you could just download openoffice. http://www.openoffice.org
> Brian
thanks for the great information. I, already, used it and posted it to my blog
D
Hi!
I did what you instructed in this tutorial, but after I click on INSERT INTO POST only text appear on the new page, which is the title of the ebook.
Do I have to download that cutePDF?
Thanks!
Instead of going this approach, it might make more sense to upload your PDF to a system like docstoc (http://docstoc.com) and then use the Lizzer bookmarklet to insert the docstoc document directly into your WordPress blog (with just one click).
This tends to be the most user-friendly approach to putting PDF’s on your blog.
Thats a real clear description, but my target is to create a PDF from the website for download by user themself.
Otherwise it´s to much to maintain.
Until now I tried several PDF-writer for wordpress, but all do not work properly.
Who knows a absolut good one. ?
Weird, I tried this and the link 404′s.
It looks like the path to the file is being rewritten by .htaccess because I used the cleaner url for the permalink? That’s the only guess I have.
I make templates for cms systems and have only just started with WordPress. Seems to me that clean urs should work with other media types?
Or maybe something else happened? Anyhoo, I know this isn’t a form here, but if anyone has some tips, I would sure appreciate it.
(PS, I landed here from google searching the following: “Add PDF to WordPress”)
First, I want to thank you for the great information on making a .pdf file from a Word document. My printer option is PDF995, but otherwise everything went as you said.
Second, and the reason I read your article, is that although I am able to upload .pdf files successfully to my wordpress posts, they require two clicks to open them. The link appears in the post just fine, but when the user clicks on it, another screen appears with only the title of the post and a repeat of the link. This confuses readers, and some of them give up altogether. Do you know of a way to eliminate the extra screen?
Thanks for you advise!
If you create a link to the actual pdf there will only be one click. Right click on the link (from the first click) and then click “copy link location” or something similar to get the link. You will know you have the right one when it ends with “.pdf”
The link url look something like http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/file.pdf if you link to that you should be good to go.
Let me know if that works for you.
-Thomas
Thanks for responding. I’m not getting anything like you’ve described when I right click on the links on the first page of my post. The URL that shows up in the address bar on the second page is: http://1stspanish.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/POR-VS-PARA-EJERCICIO-2.pdf.
But that URL appears after the first click and before the second one. By that time the readers are confused, because a “Leave a Reply” box appears below, so they leave a comment stating that they can’t find the link (which is above, just below the title).
I appreciate your help.
Thanks for you sharing. I will use on my blog. thanks again.
Hi, thanks for this great info, to linking a pdf to word-press.It is amazing what can be done using this web platform.
Toujours de tres bonne info , merci
This is genuinley useful thanks
It works quite nicely . Thank you for sharing
thanks!!! it’s just what i’ve been looking for.
Awesome helpful!!! Thanks
My uploaded media opens to a page with this: “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.”
Is this a permissions issue? I’ve set my wp-content to 777
Austin,
It may be an issue in your settings. Go to settings -> general and settings -> misc and make sure the upload folder is set correctly.
Your process doesn’t work for me. I get this message. The PDF is “locked” per copyright rules. I have the rights to post or email it. I get this message:
“Make Technology Work for You.pdf” has failed to upload due to an error
Unable to create directory /mnt/local/home/mamccauley/catalystcomm.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08. Is its parent directory writable by the server?
Mary Anne,
Are you able to upload images? It sounds like the folder permissions on your website need to be fixed.
For help see http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions
Thank you,this was a great post,very easy to understand,now I know how to ad a pdf to my site.
So, when I do this I get a link to click on and then the PDF opens. That’s not what I’m looking for, I already knew how to do that. What I actually want is for the entire newsletter to appear, not a link. Any suggestions? Thanks!
That was great advice and lots of information, thanks i cant wait to try it out.
I appreciate your idea here. Definitely it has a good content. Thank you for imparting more of your own thoughts. Good job!
If for some reason you needed to replace the PDF with a more up to date version, what is the best way to do this?
this is the worst post I have ever read.
Firstly, it dosen’t work – it just produces a link to the .pdf, not the .pdf’d document itself.
Secondly, there are a stacj of people her saying that it either doesn’t work or asking for further explanations and you won’t reply.
Hopeless stuff.
@ Greg
I wrote this guide for WordPress 2.6 and wordpress has changed a bit since then.
For those of you having trouble click “file url” and then copy the link url. This should show a .pdf at the end of the URL and is a link directly to your pdf. Just create a link to point to this address and you should be good to go.
@MSL
The easiest way would be to repeat the steps but then copy the file url and switch out the links instead of clicking “insert into post”
Thanks for all your help.
Chef Juan
I’m still learning from you, but I’m improving myself. I absolutely love reading everything that is posted on your site.Keep the posts coming. I enjoyed it
Hi,
I followed the steps at it worked. Thanks.
I need additional help if you can provide -
Que: Right now my link to pdf http://indocareexports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IndoCare-BrochureOne.zip looks just a one liner. I want to put an image there and if you click the image, the download starts. Something like that. Do you have a suggestion
-Banna
Hi Banna,
Upload the image, and insert the link to the pdf as the image URL. That should do the trick.
Hi Folks, I have tried everything above and still get a post page coming up after clicking on the link instead of the pdf itself. For some reason, when I preview the page, the pdf comes up in another window as I would hope. When I update the site and previw it after logging out, low and behold, the link has changed fom the upload url to the page I intend to show the pdf on. Is there some failsafe built into wordpress that won’t allow files to be produced from the upload url or something?
And yes I have folks saved this link as a file url and not post url.
Please help here, i’m going mad!!!!
Hey IJMAC, did you follow the instructions from the other post, How to Upload a File to WordPress?
As far as I know, there isn’t a failsafe built into WordPress that would mess up the file URL. You might want to just delete the pdf and then re-upload it using the above instructions.
the information provided is quite helpful for anyone…
Thanks, I got to know the easy way to create PDF files now.
Thanks for this post. Really useful for blogger owners.
Cheers!
Thanks so much, Thomas! I have wondered how to make a PDF file and what software was best to use. LOVED your workshop in Virginia, BTW! Blessings!
The font created by Cute PDF is not clear as its source file. Is there any alternative to CutePDF on Windows?