How to link your pdf document in a post – step-by-step guide

An easy way to link to your pdf document without showing the actual pdf in your post

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to upload a pdf document and include it as a link in your post/page, as well as format the link to open in a separate tab

1. Create and save your pdf document 

• create your document in Word

• save the document

• convert it to pdf – a quick way to convert it from Word is to select “file, print” and choose “pdf” as the printing option

• save the pdf document to your desktop so it’s easy to locate

 2. Open your WordPress dashboard

• TIP: remember, the image itself won’t show in that post/page. It’s just going to be a text link that, when clicked, opens the pdf in a separate tab – ideal for use as a CTA, freemium etc.

  open the post or page in your WordPress dashboard in to which you’d like to include the link to your pdf

• place your cursor where you’d like the link to be

3. Upload the image to your website

• TIP: instead of uploading the pdf to your website, you could upload it to your cloud storage, eg Dropbox.
  In Dropbox, hover over the file or folder you’d like to share and click the blue “share” button to see the URL. Select “send link” and copy that URL to use as the link URL in your post – see points 5 & 6 below.

  select Add Media, Upload New Media

• click “Select Files” to browse to and select your required pdf which you saved to the pc desktop

• wait for the pdf document to finish uploading (you’ll notice that pdfs in the Media Library don’t show the actual pdf image, it’s just a grey pdf symbol with the file name)

4. Fill out the image Attachment Details

• fill out the fields in the Attachment Details to the right of the Library images (you’ll notice that when inserting a pdf link, it doesn’t include the  “Alt Text”, “Alignment” and “Size” fields)

• you only need to fill out the Title and Description fields relating to the pdf – the Title field is the text link wording to be clicked on to view the pdf. I’ve just typed “Link to pdf” in the screenshot below so you can see which field is used, but you should type wording that’s more useful/descriptive. The caption field can be left blank

• TIP: the URL field’s automatically populated by WordPress when you upload any image/video to your Media Library. It’s unique to each image and that’s the link you’ll use to open the pdf.

  select the Media File option in the “Link To” field. That selection causes the pdf URL (see the URL field in the screenshot above) to automatically populate below “Link To – Media File”

• select “Insert into Post”

5. Check your pdf document opens in a separate tab

• TIP: for the purposes of this tutorial, I’ve inserted the words “Link to pdf” as an image below (not as a live link) just so you can see how that wording would show in the post.
  However, if you hover your cursor over that wording (even thought it’s an image), you’ll see the pdf file URL in the bottom left of your pc screen, which is where the link would re-direct to if it was clickable.

  you’ll remember that the wording “Link to pdf” is what I typed in the pdf Title field (see screenshot above). This is what the link will look like in your post:

  

• if the “Link to pdf” wording was a live link, the default setting is to open the pdf in the same tab as this post you’re reading
• if you’d prefer it to open in a new tab – highlight the “Link to pdf” wording and select the “Insert/edit link” icon in your WordPress toolbar:

• the URL and Link Text will already be populated (but you could update the Link Text here if you decide to changed the wording)
• tick “Open link in a new tab”, update
• now, if you click on the wording “Link to pdf” (this time it’s a live link), it’ll open as a new tab so you’ll get a good idea of what to expect when inserting a pdf link:

Link to pdf

Also, here’s how to link to a pdf in an email rather than a post

• create your text link in the email, eg (using the above example): “link to pdf”
• copy the pdf URL field (see section 4 above) and paste it into the email to create a link
• manually update the text link as necessary (ie the wording that people will click on)

There you go – that’s how easy it is to link to a pdf!

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