After allowing people to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Docs will support a new file type: PDF. Judging from Google's code, PDFs will have a distinct section and won't be imported as Google Docs documents.
An icon for PDFs has been available for a while and when you visit
http://docs.google.com/#pdfs, Google Docs informs you that there are no PDFs in the list of documents.
Google has a pretty good PDF viewer in
Google Book Search and
Google Patent Search, so I expect to see some limited editing features added to the PDF viewer before repackaging it as a Google Docs application. Fortunately for Google, no other competing services provide a decent online PDF editor.
"Since becoming one of the original Gmail and Google Docs users way back in the beta-beta days, it has been a continuing source of confusion and irritation to me that we STILL can't even upload PDFs to Google Docs. (...) For those of us with laptops and iPhones it would rock to offload as much as possible onto the web and having sharing capabilities with our clients and colleagues for ALL our docs, not just a select few. In the professional, business, and government communities, PDFs are the transmission document of choice," commented JAVA4DIVA in
a thread from Google Docs group.
Update: In less than a day, the feature has been added and you can now upload PDF files, share them and view them online. The PDF viewer is not very advanced, but you can use it to search inside a PDF file, select a block of text (Ctrl+C to copy the text) and go to a certain page.
Labels: Google Docs
Perhaps this a response to acrobat.com. When that launched I've moved all my PDFs(books/documentations/tutorials). But that lacks basic features like search, folders,tags and so on and is limited to 5GB. If Google ads PDF support, I'm sold
ahab said on June 10, 2008 6:58 AM PDT:
The next users will ask for is to be able to upload (and download)
unchanged .doc , .xls and .ppt files, as well as loads of other files - including .exe files.
In essence most users would like to use Google Docs as an
on-line storage or even an
Internet drive. Offering just .pdf won't please them on the long run.
b said on June 10, 2008 7:34 AM PDT:
I keep getting PDF format is not supported. Save as HTML.
Even on the http://docs.google.com/#pdfs
location.
when is this going to be implemented?
You can always use
A.nnotate.com for viewing and annotating uploaded PDF (and Word / Powerpoint / Excel / Web pages) in the browser - unlike google docs (and even acrobat.com) it displays PDFs in high quality in the browser, with the correct fonts, figures, page layout etc, and allows highlighting text to add comments. It doesn't even need any plugins - all done with vanilla javascript / html.
Moses said on June 10, 2008 6:01 PM PDT:
Adobe's
acrobat.com is cool, I would like to see Google Doc have the same functions... :)
ahab said on June 10, 2008 6:52 PM PDT:
PDF uploading has now come practically available in Google Docs.
There are a few errors when I click - in the Google Docs PDF item - on an uploaded PDF:
- The page opens with at the top the name of the PDF, beneath it a Download link, a Print link and a Share link. Beneath that, what seems like an error page that says: "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested does not exist.
Please check the address and try again." This error page obviously should not appear.
Note that although the Download link and Print link work, the Share link leads to an incorrect page, i.e to: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=96713&hl=en
The PDF *can* be shared from the Google Docs files List.
What I'm already missing is the option to store directly in Google Docs, the PDFrendering of a Google Docs document/spreadsheet/presentation; IMHO a big omission....
It works! I can now upload pdf's into Google Docs.
You can't view them yet but it won't take them long to fix that.
Google now provides all my online storage needs.
I can abandon Skydrive and Omnidrive.
said on June 10, 2008 9:05 PM PDT:
I predict that Google will finally speed development up of all its services and finally integrate them into a smooth useable one stop service now that Apple has pretty much cloned eveything they are offering with its 'mobileme' paid service. Funny how the world works, i bet apple will get the credit in the future for inventing 'cloud computing':) Apple rips off Xerox, history forgets. MS clones Apple and the Media & Fanbois are still talking about it almost 30 years later.....
Today i have upload some PDF files, but unfortunetly PDF not opening. its showing error "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested does not exist."
Whats this.
One benifit I see is also a link to pdf viewer in gmail... I really miss this feature.
I have been using google docs since the very release. I love most of it.
One feature I desperately miss, is online file storage where I could store all my PERSONAL data.
It doesn't make much sense to have half of the data stored online, where the other half stays locally.
This step is definite PLUS. however I expect more from this direction.
Amazing step... now we need the viewer :D (we never get satisfaction?)
ahab said on June 11, 2008 3:59 AM PDT:
@charlieperry
@Ajit Mogra
The top half of the page you get when you
click on an uploaded PDF in Google Docs contains a
Download, a
Print and a
Share link
(For now ignore the bottom half of the page that contains the error message).
When you click on Download most (some :) browsers will give you the option to Open or Save the PDF; when using Open the PDF will show.
The Google Docs team still has to tweak some links - the bottom half page probably should show the PDF in a viewer and the Share link still does not work (although sharing from the Google Docs files list is possible).
VLad said on June 11, 2008 9:45 AM PDT:
it's working now
you can view your pdf's
Yup, you can now visualize, sharing is still working.
ahab said on June 11, 2008 3:13 PM PDT:
Only
100 PDF files can be uploaded and stored on Google Docs. They can be
10 MB when uploaded from one's computer, but only
2 MB when uploaded directly by a URL.
There is
no option (yet?)
to publish PDF files stored on Google Docs.
ahab said on June 11, 2008 11:03 PM PDT:
It should be noted that the preview feature for PDF files in Google Docs can
show only the first 100 pages of an uploaded PDF.
According to Google Docs this is
not considered a bug...
So many limitations! I hope the 100 pages limitation will be removed as more resources are allocated to the PDF converters.
said on June 12, 2008 9:14 AM PDT:
I've been going paperless recently - scanning all of my paper documents to pdf and then shredding them. The one thing missing is a place online to upload them so that they're searchable by metadata.
Google docs isn't
quite there yet - it isn't indexing the pdf metadata for it's search.
this is so sweet! i can see this saving a lot of time and headaches
said on June 16, 2008 7:19 AM PDT:
@ahab
Try http://www.pdfescape.com
if you are looking to share / edit PDF files online.
PDF online viewer is pretty fast http://view.samurajdata.se/
It hasn't any special service, just let you see the PDF in two sizes and move within the document. It shows images, something Google can't do. I use it for my work: i put the site in my favorites. So, any time i find any PDF in Google, i copy the URL and quickly paste it in PDF online. We can upload a file from our computer also, and view it online. It's specially good when you're in a different computer and it hasn't Adobe installed. There are many resources online, but only this let you see the file with images without registering. OK... If you only want to see the text, Google caché "(view in HTML)" is faster.
Frank said on August 20, 2008 3:25 PM PDT:
It would be nice to have in Google Docs, PDF online presentations as they already have them for Powerpoint formats.
So nearly there! I also am paperless, so would require a way to enable SSL transactions on GDs, metadata searching and possibly more than 100 pages in preview before I could being my archive online. Would be awesome if I could!
John said on September 14, 2008 10:11 PM PDT:
An uploader for google docs that includes PDF files would be nice as well. If not that, the option to select more than 1 file in the integrated uploader would be nice.
atenta said on November 11, 2008 1:57 AM PDT:
Hi! I have problems uploading PDFs to googl Docs. They seem to be recognized as .docs and not as .pdfs and look like:
endobj 263 0 obj << /S 1739 /L 1906 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 264 0 R >> stream H‰b```f``ýÎÀÆÀÀ’É Ä€�B ¬ ì , Y 9@bì ¸Á¢Íä°
Any ideas?
Thank you.
said on December 16, 2008 5:28 PM PDT:
This is not an uploading problem, your pdf converter is doing something wrong.
Waou !!!! And steel doesn't work on mac ....wonderfull !!!!
said on January 28, 2009 12:36 PM PDT:
I agree with John. I would love the feature to upload more than one doc at a time...
said on February 3, 2009 1:45 AM PDT:
I just found out about this and im really dissapointed. What good is if i can upload an up to 10mb pdf if i cant view it all?
Limitation about sizes is OK, but pages? Doesnt make sense.
It's useful for me.
when I upload my pdf documents to google docs, I just found out something when I search my documents information quickly.
cpolka said on March 1, 2009 2:19 PM PDT:
When I try to upload a PDF (1.2MB), I get an error message saying that files can't be >500K. I thought PDFs can be 10MB from your PC? My total space used is only 6MB, so that's not it. Any insight?
said on March 12, 2009 11:44 PM PDT:
I would love to see an option to open PDF directly in the google viewer when searching google.
said on March 19, 2009 1:11 AM PDT:
I feel one should be able to share the pdf files for viewing to anyone just like it is possible for doc.
said on March 29, 2009 8:26 AM PDT:
stop all this bickering and use box.net instead
said on May 4, 2009 10:53 AM PDT:
Not being able to publish it is a MAJOR downfall. I am very disappointed in this aspect!
Jon said on June 23, 2009 2:35 PM PDT:
You can use http://pdfstack.com
Prabin said on June 26, 2009 3:27 PM PDT:
how to get direct link of that pdf file for web site or blog purpose
You can't publish PDF files yet.
