How to share a PDF as a link

You want to send someone a PDF without attaching it. The file’s too big, or the last one bounced, or you’ve realised that “please find attached” is doing your work no favours.

So: how do you turn a PDF into a link? Here are the four realistic routes, what each one is good at, and the specific trap in each.

Google Drive

The default for most people, and free.

1. Upload the PDF to Drive
2. Right-click it → Share
3. Under General access, change Restricted to Anyone with the link
4. Check the role beside it says Viewer, not Editor
5. Copy link

The trap: step 3 is the one everyone forgets. Leave it on Restricted and your recipient hits a request-access screen — and you won’t know, because it looks fine to you. You’re signed in.

Test it in a private window every time. That single habit prevents the most common failure in this entire article.

The other trap: the recipient lands in Google’s file viewer. Grey chrome, a Drive toolbar, a prominent Download button, and a “Sign in” prompt in the corner. It works, but nobody would mistake it for your document.

Dropbox

1. Hover the file → Share → Copy link
2. Check the permission is Can view

Cleaner than Drive’s viewer, and the link works reliably. On a free account, people still meet Dropbox branding and a sign-up nudge on the way to your document.

OneDrive / SharePoint

1. Right-click → Share
2. Click the permissions line at the top and choose Anyone with the link
3. Untick Allow editing
4. Copy

The trap: many work accounts have “Anyone with the link” disabled by IT policy. The option is simply missing, and the link you generate only works for people inside your organisation. If you’re sending to a client from a corporate account, test it externally before you rely on it.

A document reader

Upload, get a link, and the link opens your document — not a file manager with your document inside it. No sign-in, no download prompt, no third-party branding between the reader and the page.

The practical differences that matter for client work:

• It opens as readable pages on a phone, rather than a shrunken A4 page you have to pinch at
• You can replace the file later and the link keeps working, so nothing you’ve already sent goes stale
• You can see whether it was opened, and how far they got
• You can put a password or an email gate in front of it, and take it down when the deal’s done

This is what Living Page does — upload a PDF, get a link that opens as a page-turning reader, embed it if you want. The link and the reader are on the free plan; passwords and the email gate are on Solo and above.

Which to use

	Best for
Google Drive	Internal sharing, files people should download and keep
Dropbox	The same, slightly cleaner, if you’re already in it
OneDrive	Inside a Microsoft organisation — check external access first
A document reader	Anything a client sees, and anything you might need to change

The honest split: if the recipient’s job is to keep the file, a cloud drive is right and a reader is overkill. If their job is to read it — a proposal, a brochure, a menu, a prospectus — then a drive link makes them do work first, and a reader doesn’t.

Four things that catch people out

Test signed out. Private window, every time. Half of all “the link doesn’t work” messages are a permission left on Restricted.

Watch what happens on a phone. Most PDFs are read on a phone now, and most PDF links are terrible on one — a page laid out for A4, delivered at a third of its size.

Remember links go stale. Update the file and most tools hand you a brand-new address, quietly orphaning everything you’ve already sent. If the document will change — a price list, a menu behind a QR code — pick something that keeps the link.

A link is a key. Anyone who has it can open it, and links get forwarded. If it matters, put a password or an email gate in front of it rather than relying on the URL being hard to guess.

The short version

Any of these turns a PDF into a link in under a minute. The question isn’t really how — it’s what you want the person on the other end to arrive at.

A file they download, or a document they read.