Have you ever wished you could open a PDF in Google docs and make all kinds of changes to it just as though it’s a regular Google Doc? Well, as it turns out, you actually can, and it’s quite easy to do!
And in this article, I’m going to show you how it’s done!
Prefer to watch a video about how to open a PDF in Google Docs? Click here.
How To Open A PDF File In Google Docs
To open a PDF in Google Docs, your PDF will first have to be saved in Google Drive, if your PDF is already in Google Drive, you’re good to go, but if it’s not, you’ll need to upload it first by following the steps in this article.
Once your PDF is on Google Drive, you’ll just need to go to drive.google.com and find your PDF wherever it may be inside Google Drive, and then double click on it to open it.
Now that you have the PDF open inside Google Drive, all you’ll need to do is click on the drop down menu at the top of the screen that says “Open with”…
And then, in the menu that appears, select “Google Docs”.
Now, Google Docs will be open in a new tab, and you’ll see a loading screen like this for a few seconds while it converts the PDF into a Google Doc:
But then, once it loads, you’ll see your entire PDF inside Google Docs as a Google Doc.
Depending on the content that was in your PDF, it might not have worked absolutely perfectly, so you may have to make some adjustments, but most of the time, with a fairly normal PDF, it will work perfectly!
And that’s really all other is to it, your PDF is now a Google Doc. So now you can edit it just like you would with a normal Google Doc, and do whatever you want with it.
How To Re-Save Your Document As A PDF (Optional)
After you’ve finished making some edits to your document, you could just leave it as a Google Doc, or you could re-download it as a PDF so that you will end up with a PDF file just like the original, but with some changes made. This way, you’re kind of using Google Docs as a PDF editor.
To re-download your edited document as a PDF, all you need to do is click “File” in the top left hand corner…
And then, in the menu that appears, hover over “Download”…
And select “PDF Document”.
Now, your modified document will be downloaded as a PDF!
And that’s all there is to it! So whether you wanted to use Google Docs as a PDF editor, or you just wanted to open up your PDF in Google Docs and keep it that way, you now know how to open a PDF in Google Docs!
