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Almost every web page can be saved and exported as a PDF, including web pages of articles, posts, and other text-based information that you may want to save on your computer or send to someone else. This is also useful if you want to edit a PDF or .docx version of a web page or article.
So how can you save or export web pages as PDFs? Can you convert these PDFs to editable documents? What’s the easiest way to edit PDFs that you’ve saved and exported?
In this article, we’ll go through exporting and saving PDFs from the web, as well as how to export specific pages from a PDF.
Save Web Page as PDF
Depending on what web browser you use, there are a few ways to download and save a web page as a PDF. We’ll walk through the process with Google Chrome, but know that the same methodology will work for other web browsers.
- Open an article you want to save on your browser and select the Options button on the top right of your web browser.
On Google Chrome this is the 3 stacked dots.
- Select Print from the options menu.
You can also use the hotkey CTRL + P on your Windows keyboard or CMD + P on a Mac to automatically launch the print menu.
- In the print menu, select Microsoft Print to PDF as the destination. (On Apple devices, the destination reads “Print to PDF.”)
This will save the web page as a PDF rather than printing a physical version of the document. You can select which specific pages you want to save, as well as the layout you’d like the document to take. You can also preview what the document will look like once you print it.
You will then have a dialogue box appear that prompts you to save the document somewhere on your PC as a PDF. Make sure that you select a file location that you’ll be able to find again. You may need to type in a name for the document, as the print-to-PDF feature doesn’t always automatically generate a name; other times, it may generate gibberish. You can also rename the document.
For other web browsers, use the CTRL + P feature or find the Print option in that browser’s options menu.
To make major edits to the text of the PDF that you’ve downloaded, use PDF.Live’s PDF to .DOC converter. Upload the PDF you just created and PDF.Live will convert this PDF to an editable document that you can open using Microsoft Word or a similar document editor.
To make minor edits, PDF.Live’s editing tool has excellent options for changing text, adding and removing images, and using markup tools and annotations.
Just drag and drop the PDF from your computer to the converter. or click Select File to Convert and navigate to where the PDF is located on your PC to upload it to the converter.
Export PDF
For PDFs that already exist on the web, it’s fairly easy to export them and save them to your computer for further use. Websites will often link manuals, recipes, financial statements and other documentation as a PDF so that you can easily download and/or export for repeated use.
- Open the PDF you want to export within your web browser.
You’ll be able to tell that you’re opening a PDF when the URL at the top of your screen ends in a .PDF.
- Select the Print or Save icons at the top right of the screen.
You can either use the Microsoft Print to PDF (simply “Print to PDF” on Apple devices) feature we outlined above, or directly save the PDF on your system.
- Save the PDF on your PC to export it.
This is the simplest way to export PDFs from the web to your computer. If you want to export specific pages, you can specify those pages in the Microsoft Print to PDF settings by selecting the Custom option under the Pages area. On a Mac, select Pages beneath the Destination box.
Then, type the page range or specific page that you want to export. From a Mac, choose All, Odd pages only, Even pages only, or Custom to select a single page or specific pages.
Alternatively, you can use PDF.Live’s PDF editor to extract, split, or separate a specific page from a PDF. With the editor, you can merge multiple PDFs, or pull a specific page from an existing PDF. You can even create new blank pages to fill in with whatever content that you’d like using the editor!
To do this, check out our separate guide on extracting pages from a PDF on PC. You do not need to download or install a special PDF saver to do this or any of the steps above. With PDF.Live, it’s built into our cloud-based PDF manager.