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Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:48 AM PDT

Working with Google Docs' New PDF Upload

In case you missed it, Google stealthily introduced a new PDF upload feature into their Google Docs offering last week. I use the service most every day, and I just came across it by clicking the 'New Features' link at the top of the documents list. Here's what I found.

You can pull a .pdf into your online documents store from your desktop or from a URL (max size of 10MB if uploaded from your PC, or 2MB if pulled in from a URL). Afterwards the file shows up in your document list and you can click it to view it like any other stored file.

But you can't edit the file. To display a stored .pdf, Google converts each page in the document to an image (in the .png format). Which means, despite a feature announcement post from the Official Google Docs Blog that says "While you can't edit them yet, you can copy & paste text," you can't actually cut and paste text from within the converted image. At least not in any way I can figure out.

Also, while you can search for words in the file's name using the search box on the document list page, you can't search for text within the file as you can for regular documents or spreadsheets. And as noted in a post today, you can only view the first 100 pages of large .pdf's.

So what can you do, aside from viewing?  You can download, print or share the file, which could make the new feature a useful option for making a .pdf available to many people without clogging up inboxes with huge attachments. Just keep in mind that to share, you need to select the file from the documents list. The 'Share' link you see while viewing the document only takes you to the Google Docs Help Center.

Despite the limitations, I can see this as a useful feature given how ubiquitous .pdf's have become as a business file format. And the Google Blog entry suggests that an edit feature may be coming, which would take this from nice to terrific.  

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