Preserving PDF Quality When Downloading From Google Docs – Robert Wenger

When downloading a Google Doc file as a PDF tonight, I ran into an annoying problem.

When downloading a PDF from Google docs using File > Download as > PDF Document, I received an image that looks like this.

All of the text in the downloaded PDF has very jagged edges with no anti-aliasing. No matter which font I chose, this issue persisted. Here’s how I got around the issue:

Click Print
In the print options dialogue, change your printer to something along the lines of “print to PDF”.

Printing to PDF from Google Docs using Google Chrome and Windows 10.

Here’s what my PDF looked like after “printing” it:

After using the Print to PDF tool, my document has much higher quality.

Hopefully Google can fix this soon, but until they do, this workaround should let you use your PDFs.

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