Inserting PDFs and other Documents

Overview

You can upload PDFs to be linked in your pages. You can also select PDFs that have already been uploaded elsewhere on your site and link to them.

This is similar to how we upload and link to PDFs on our Drupal 7 sites.

Table of Contents

Steps

Inserting PDFs using the "Link" icon

1) Select your text to be linked to the PDF.

From within a page or piece of content with a text editor, type and select the text you want the PDF or doc to link to.

Make sure that the link is as specific as possible. "Click here" or "Read more" or "this" is not specific enough and will not comply with accessibility standards.

2) Click the chain icon that says "Link."

This is the same icon you click when you want to insert a link to a page on your site, or on another site.

3) Click the "Open File Browser" text. 

This brings up IMCE, the File Manager.

4) Select your file.

If your file is already in the File Manager, you can click on it and hit the "Select" option at the top.

If you don't see it, you can upload the file from your desktop.

Click "Upload" and "Add File."

I'm uploading and linking to this Color Guide PDF.

There are file size limits, usually 2 megabytes, so if the PDF doesn't upload, it may be too large.

Talk to your IT Professional about how to reduce the file size.

I actually re-saved the original of this using Adobe Acrobat's "Save as Reduced Size PDF" option. 431kb is small enough.

Click on your newly uploaded PDF and click "Select."

You'll see the url to the PDF.

5) Save your link.

It now appears in the document.

6) Save your document and test your link.

Your browser settings will determine whether the PDF appears in the browser or downloads automatically.

Inserting PDFs using the "File" icon

Alternatively, if you know your PDF isn't on the site already, you can by pass the File Manager altogether.

1) As before, select the text you want to click to.

2) Click on the paperclip icon that says "File."

This takes you straight to your desktop to upload a file.

3) Select a file from your desktop.

4) Click save.

5) Save your document and test your link as before.

Getting a file to appear in the menu structure

Let's say you want a PDF or other file to exist in the menu somewhere, not on a page.

We'll start a Basic Page and upload a PDF the usual way. We will save the page as published, which is different than the way we would go about this in Drupal 7, where we wouldn't have to save a page). We'll go to the File list, get the url for the file, and go into the menu structure and add the url to the PDF to the menu.

1) Go to Add Content and select Basic Page

You can use any content type with the text editor field, really.

2) Using the instructions above for Inserting a PDF file via the link icon, or the one using the file button, upload a PDF.

3) Save the page as unpublished. Having a page, even if unpublished, tells Drupal that the file is permanent rather than temporary.

4) Go to Content and Look for the File tab.If you don't see this "File" tab, put in a ticket to the web team via helpdesk.franklin.uga.edu.

5) Under the file tab, we see our recently uploaded file.

6) Click on the file to get the url. We only want the part after the .edu. So starting at "/sites/default/files/etc..."

7) Go to the menu structure and click "Add Link."

You can access via Structure >> Menus >> Main Menu, or via the Shortcut links in the main menu.

For more information on working with menus, click here. 

8) Paste your url, give the link a title, and decide where it will go. Save the link.

9) You will see your PDF in the menu structure.

Deleting PDFs permanently

To remove PDFs and other files permanently, from the File Manager, select a File and click on delete. Or, follow my instructions here: How to delete files in Drupal 8 or Drupal 7