4 Tips For Working With PDF Files and Google Docs

Tips on working with PDF and Google Docs

Last time on our blog, we covered a quick trick allowing you to work seamlessly between Able2Extract and Google Drive by showing you how to open Google Drive PDFs with Able2Extract Professional

With the amount of time that one tip can save you, a few more PDF and Google Drive tips could bring your PDF and Google Drive workflow to another level. 

However, as is the case with most tasks, there are some things that you need to do that just can’t be done. For instance, you may have tried to insert PDF into a google doc, to convert PDF to a Google doc or attach a PDF to a Google Doc.

While it may not be possible to achieve such things as of yet, we can offer up a few workarounds to them. Below you’ll find working solutions to the top commonly asked questions that pop up when working with PDF files and Google Docs. 

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Everything You Need To Know About PDF Drive

how to search for a PDF

These days it’s quite common to turn to the Internet to see if you can find a digital version of a book or information you need. However, it can be difficult to find exactly what you need.

At times you may only have a few readable portions of the PDF eBook you’re looking for or at other times, you may not find anything at all. This is where PDF search engines come in.

In the past, we’ve covered a few PDF search engines, but with the growing popularity of online PDF converters, the amount of resources online, and the constant interaction with digital documents, it’s high time to find one that can keep up with today’s constantly and digitally connected users.

And we came across one PDF search engine that you may not have heard of yet: PDF Drive.

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5 Tips on Optimizing your PDFs for Search

optimize PDFs for search

The PDF is the world’s favorite format for sharing documents like reports, studies, survey results, guides and tutorials, manuals and more. As a website owner, you probably want to showcase documents relevant to your business and make them publicly available for download and use.

If you share PDFs on your website, you definitely want people to find them easily. Not just on your website, but through search engines like Google as well. For example, let’s say that you’re offering free Excel cheatsheets for download in PDF on your website. You’ll want people searching online for Excel keyboard shortcuts or Excel formula cheatsheets to easily find your handy freebies through search engines like Google.

To help people to find your PDFs, you first need to make it easy for search engines to discover and understand them, so they can include them in their index and then show them as high as possible in their SERPs (search engine result pages) for relevant queries.  

Now, the question is, how to optimize your PDFs for search engines? Fortunately, it isn’t rocket science and we have some easy tweaks for making your PDFs more search engine friendly.  

How To SEO Your PDFs

Follow these five tips to make your PDFs easy on the eyes of search engines:

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Emailing PDFs – Best Practices

PDFs as Email Attachments

Sending files and documents via email is an everyday activity for most people today. When these correspondences are casual, you don’t need to put too much thought into the type of files you’re attaching and emailing to your recipients. However, if the email is professional or academic in nature, you need to think a bit more about how to best present the information you’re sending.

For example, if you’re sending a resume or CV to a potential employer, proposals to clients, or samples of your work for acceptance into an academic program, then there should be a higher level of professionalism associated with your attachments. The first thing to consider when sending business, school or career-related documents is the file format.

In this post, we’ll guide you through the basics of why you should email files as PDF and we’ll even cover a list of some of the most common methods for emailing PDF documents.  

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5 PDF Tasks You Didn’t Know Could Be Done Through A Web Browser

Web browsers have come a long way. There was a time when finally being able to view a PDF natively inside Firefox or Chrome got everyone excited. Now, viewing PDFs is the most basic PDF task you can perform.

Aside from viewing PDFs in your browser, you now know more than a handful of PDF tasks you can accomplish online. But we’ll bet that there are still a few PDF web tricks you didn’t know about. Here are 5 you probably didn’t know about.

1. Translate PDF Text

Because you know that PDFs are hard to edit, it’s natural that you wouldn’t peg the format as one you could translate into different languages. However, it is possible to do so without converting your file and manually translating it word for word with Google Translate.

The online translator  is a popular tool for anyone who needs a quick reference. But in case you didn’t notice, it also has an option where you can upload a document to be translated–PDFs included! Obviously, just as the translations for manual text entries may not be 100%, the translations for documents can be slightly inaccurate, as well. So use this tool with that caveat in mind.

2. Convert PDF to JPEG, Excel and PowerPoint

You’re strapped for time. You need to make some final analysis on tabular data. You need to prep approved images for publication.  You need to make some tweaks to a presentation you’re giving in a few hours. Any of these sound familiar? These scenarios are all too common, and in each case, a PDF file can be involved, making that single PDF task even tougher.

Convert PDF To JPG Online

In cases like these, online conversion tools can be a lifesaver. We know the constraints of time, money and resources. That’s why we’ve made it easy for you to get that PDF to JPEG, PDF to Excel and PDF to PowerPoint conversion done. No installation needed. No registration required. Just upload your file, enter your email and click on Convert. Your file will be emailed to you, free of charge.

3. Read a PDF File Out Loud 

Anyone who needs to review, research or do some reading can especially hate the task if it involves doing so with a PDF document and a busy schedule. Not only does it mean having to read a screen, but, if you’re on the go, it also means having to do it on a mobile device. Something a bit cumbersome for a 5-7 inch gadget. And that’s why SpokenText  makes this list.

This tool is an online text to audio converter that comes with the ability to convert text in documents to audio files (.mp3, .m4b) you can take with you. You literally turn your reading task into a listening one. It can convert Word documents, plain text files and PDF documents, just to name a few. This online tool has paid and trial accounts with a few customizable features that makes it worth checking out.

4. Bookmark Your Page In A PDF

Reading lengthy PDF files in Chrome is common and it can be pretty frustrating at times.  You close your PDF, lose your page and then open the file later on, only to scroll through the entire PDF  to find the one place where you left off.

The Chrome extension, Additor allows you to quickly bookmark the PDF you’re reading.

5. Sign PDF Documents

Signing PDFs is one of those tasks that you don’t want to do. It sounds tedious and difficult. So it may surprise you that it can accomplished online and with Chrome, no less. Of course, this capability is done through a Chrome extension: HelloSign.

Selecting Signature Type

HelloSign will let you add form fields and signatures to PDFs that are uploaded to Google Drive. Signed documents come with an audit trail to keep track of them, email notifications to all parties, and the ability to share the signed form. Read our tutorial on how to sign PDF documents. We feature a step by step look at how to use this extension to add a signature to your PDF documents.

With just a few of these tips, you can further enhance how you work with PDF files online. Give them a try and let us know how they work out for you.