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I'm looking to save my pageless Google Doc as a .PDF file. I have tried the workaround described in the answer to Save document as PDF without page breaks from Google Docs which essentially works by saving the Google Doc as HTML, then using a web service to convert to pageless PDF, however this method does not allow for images to be included.

I am open to all kinds of workarounds, as I am desperate to get this done correctly.

Also, this post is NOT a duplicate of Save document as PDF without page breaks from Google Docs, as my question is distinct in that it needs to include images, not simply text as posted in the other question.

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    Have you tried opening the Doc in your browser and using the html-pdf browser extension?
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 1:06
  • @BlindSpots yes, thanks for asking. When I try that it says "Unable to Load" Try it yourself - docs.google.com/document/d/…
    – Kalamalka Kid
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 4:37
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    You can first publish the Doc File > Share > Publish to web then the extension will work. You will need to make the images the same width as the text area or they will overlap, and may still not be happy with the output. This is an example of an XY problem.
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 16:45
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    Thank you this seems to work, however I am not able to reconcile the image width difference. When I look at the images on my document before publishing they seem fine, so I am at a loss of how to resize them. Indeed it is an XY problem.
    – Kalamalka Kid
    Commented Apr 23, 2023 at 18:23
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    I've got an idea I'll try when I'm home tonight.
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Apr 23, 2023 at 22:26

3 Answers 3

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Below is a variation on the workaround you linked to with a fix for your missing images problem.

The issue is that Sejda's HTML-to-PDF tool can only understand the paths for images that are hosted on the web. My workaround (workaround for a workaround) is simply to temporarily host the images on the web.

For example, when you download your Doc as HTML you end up downloading a ZIP archive. When you extract the ZIP archive, you note that it contains one HTML file in addition to a folder labeled images containing your 6 images (5 png, 1 jpg):

  • images/image1.png
  • images/image2.jpg
  • images/image3.png
  • images/image4.png
  • images/image5.png
  • images/image6.png

These images are linked in the HTML document in image tags similar to <img src="images/image5.png">

Instructions

  1. Temporarily upload each of the images in turn, and note their new web URLs.
  2. Open the HTML file in a text editor, and perform a "Replace All" using the local image path as the FIND string, and the web URL as the REPLACE string.
  3. Once that has been completed for each of the 6 images, save the HTML document.
  4. Open the HTML document in a web browser and use Sejda's HTML-to-PDF extension or alternatively upload the file to Sejda's HTML-to-PDF converter, or even copy and paste the HTML code.
Find All (local image path) Replacement (Image URL)                                                                                                                                     
images/image1.png https://i.sstatic.net/LGvvJ.png
images/image2.jpg https://i.sstatic.net/DHYEZ.jpg
images/image3.png https://i.sstatic.net/JDubj.png
images/image4.png https://i.sstatic.net/1SPCz.png
images/image5.png https://i.sstatic.net/dkz6g.png
images/image6.png https://i.sstatic.net/76lMJ.png
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    I will accept this as answered (thank you), but there is no way I am going to do this each time one of my dozens of tutorials is updated, as they are updated often. I was hoping for an easy way to do this. Thanks for the workaround.
    – Kalamalka Kid
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 2:05
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Opera browser can save a web page as a pageless PDF so this can be leveraged to save an HTML version a Google document including images as a pageless PDF

  1. From the File menu of your pageless Google doc, select Download then Web Page (.html, zipped).
  2. Unzip the downloaded file to a folder.
  3. Locate the HTML file in the folder and open it in Opera browser
  4. Right-click on the open page and select Save as PDF
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  • Would using the publish to the web functionality be better than download as html in order to better preserve formatting, provide an easy way to regenerate the PDF if changes get made, and avoid dealing with the ZIP etc.
    – Blindspots ♦
    Commented Aug 23 at 22:27
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  • Download the pageless doc as an HTML file
  • Unzip it
  • Open the file in Opera
  • Download as PDF

Don't ask me why Opera works but other browsers don't!

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