Work efficiently with PDFs in Google Drive
Using PDFs
Like other files and folders, you can store PDFs in Google Drive ( http://drive.google.com ), either manually or via the Backup and Sync app ( http://www.google.com/drive/download ).
Viewing a PDF in preview is no problem either: just double-click on the file in the Google Drive web interface and you can browse and zoom in. In addition, the icons at the top right of the document allow you to add comments, print or save it locally and share, move it or add a star.
Tip. Here’s a trick to rotate PDF files in Google Drive: click on the printer icon and then on Cancel (or press Esc ). An icon for rotating the document will now appear in the top-right corner.
Open your PDFs in Google Docs
In the preview of a PDF file in Google Drive you can click on Open With; Google Docs at the top. The PDF will be then read and converted into customisable text via OCR or Optical Character Recognition . This does not always work perfectly, but if the result is acceptable, you can start editing the text.
Changes are saved in the Google Docs format, but you can also export them to PDF via File; Download as; PDF Document .
Note. Such an edited PDF may no longer look like the original, so we advise against this method if you only need to make minor changes and you want to preserve the original formatting.
Tip. Opening a PDF document in Google Docs allows you to quickly search it.
Install a PDF extension
If you want to edit PDF files directly in Google Drive, you will need to install a PDF extension. This is done via the New button on the Drive homepage. Then click on More ; Connect More Apps and enter e.g. Kami, a good, free PDF extension. Give permission to Kami ( http://www.kamihq.com ) by logging in with your Google Account. Once you have done this, you can select it when opening a PDF in Google Drive ( Open with ...). Kami lets you add text, annotate it, add drawings and insert images. The free version shows ad banners on the side but not in the edited PDF documents themselves.
Note. It’s not possible to modify existing text in PDF files.
A similar alternative is Lumin PDF ( http://www.luminpdf.com ), which is installed in the same way as Kami. Tip. Both Lumin PDF and Kami contain a search function.
PDF Mergy (same setup method) allows you to merge PDF documents.
Save a webpage as PDF
If you are using Chrome, you can save any web page as a PDF file in Google Drive: simply open the Chrome print function and choose Save to Google Drive .
You can save other document types as PDF in Google Drive. Click File ; Download As ; PDF Document after opening the document.
Tip. If you use the Google Drive app, you can save paper documents as PDFs using the Scan function.
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