Allow greater customization of PDF export

[ahcsco]

What's your feature/idea?

Today PDF export options in gitbook is very basic. Allow for greater customization like adding headers footers, font / color styling, cover page design.

What's your desired outcome?

Have better pdf export than the current bland version

What's the impact of this for you?

• Critical
• High
• Medium
• Low

Anything else?

No response

[taszap]

This issue is linked to #90

[De-Ma]

Hi,

we just changed over to Gitbook and one of the major reason was the PDF export feature. We have customers who benefit from PDFs, and in our trail of Gitbook it looked promising.
Now we run in to more and more problems with the PDF export and we are hoping for features / support:

• "Cards" are not exported correctly in PDFs
  • The "Cards" don't seam to export well at all
• Site links are nowhere to be seen (when they are linked as page)
  • Links to internal spaces (when included as page) should also be included as full printout in the PDF export (or toggle if they should be included). We would like to use this to append our Copyright and Disclaimer page.
• No Table of content in exports
  • Expected behavior: Included table of content as Bookmarks, for easy PDF navigation
• Missing Footer/Title bar (or export date in the Footer)
  • What we would like: Customizable Header/Footer, maybe dependent on page style
• Missing Branding in exported PDFs
  • We would like to have our Logo and color theme represented in the export

[OtherToday]

We need this too. I am using it for student work and need a pdf back up for submission however lots of the formating is off and sometimes images don't get exported at all. It is not clear what rules govern page breaks. It would be handy if there was some tool that specified page breaks.

[azisso]

The basic requirement of having our branding is crucial. While there are many important ideas here, this one thing is a quick win and it's weird the logo goes away when you export to PDF - this will make them look much more professional

[a-asharapova]

We also need this. Simple branding and a table of contents are must-have for PDF documentation.

[outragedhuman]

We would also like to see this!

[sarahf16]

This would be really useful for us too.

[brunommst]

This would be very helpful for my team as well.

[pfj-joshua-golden]

Any updates on this? Our team uses Gitbook (Enterprise) and the ability to export to PDF and share some of our documents with other teams in our organization. The current PDF export is not professional in appearance and we're having to bend over backwards to move document content to another solution in order to provide indirect access.

[kfc2023]

exporting the whole space, too. decision makers don't want to peruse a portal.

[JaniceManwiller]

This is possible, although not very obvious - I only found out when I asked about it when they did the initial big UI update for published content.

When you click Export as PDF on a page, then on the "preview" page there is an All Pages button at the bottom left that exports the entire space.

[kfc2023]

but there is a limit of 100 pages. my doc is 300 pages and growing.

…

On Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 5:44 AM Janice Manwiller ***@***.***> wrote: This is possible, although not very obvious - I only found out when I asked about it when they did the initial big UI update for published content. When you click *Export as PDF* on a page, then on the "preview" page there is an *All Pages* button at the bottom left that exports the entire space. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#64 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A6F7GSNOXSE2QXRBJ6RZOHDZNZF33AVCNFSM6AAAAAAUPJUMCKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTAMJSGYZDCMA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[irs-sesc1]

Some more PDF customization would be very helpful for us, as we need to provide offline documentation. Basics like a logo or header/footer texts would be more than enough.

[ykla]

The current export is almost unusable. There's no table of contents, image sizes can't be adjusted, and exporting long text is extremely complicated. My friend has written a tool for your developers to refer to: https://github.com/FreeBSD-Ask/gitbook-pdf-export

[ykla]

We now support export EPUB

[JaniceManwiller]

And I still cannot export the full documentation set - mine is currently 410 pages, but when I keep adding 50 pages, it errors out after 350.

[JFQueralt]

While some requests in this thread may take time to implement, I feel everyone would enjoy seeing some progress on this front.

I could do a summary of this tread if this comment gests 7 (half of the thread's participant count at this time) and get some items the devs could work on.

Meanwhile, I thing a basic feature such as "what you see on the published page is what you get on your PDF" is nothing controversial to ask for.
Especially cover images, which is very frustrating to not see reflected on the PDF.

[naleyjanhelge]

I love GitBook but PDF´s look kinda bad so I have had to manlually vopy the page content over to Google Docs and edit it there before sending PDF´s.

[DanielSmithGK]

Hi, this topic gets more and more attention also here.
We are providing important documents to customers and it just lacks professionalism with the current state the PDF export is in.

The following features would be extremely helpful (at least):

• Cover page (branding/logo or image option, title, display version, display date (Month Year))
• Table of contents
• Footer with a branding/logo-option

Is there any chance that this feature gets picked up with more priority?

We are also working with standard Gitbook editing features like images, tables, hints, code blocks, reusable content, cards, mermaid blocks and I would expect these also working in a PDF export.

I've seen very similar discussions here:

Exporting to PDF in a clean format · GitbookIO · Discussion #1088
Retain branding in PDF export · GitbookIO · Discussion #1063
Display Table of contents in the exported PDF · GitbookIO · Discussion #1036
Feature request: Page numbers and table of contents in PDF export · GitbookIO · Discussion #1000
Request to export a PDF document to add a table of contents based on the summary · GitbookIO · Disc…
PDF files with tables of content · GitbookIO · Discussion #534
When using "export as PDF" some content does not appear or is cut off · GitbookIO · Discu…

Thanks and regards!
Daniel

[kfc2023]

indeed. right now, i'm copying/pasting content into another app when i need a pdf.

…

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 10:18 AM Daniel Smith ***@***.***> wrote: Hi, this topic gets more and more attention also here. We are providing important documents to customers and it just lacks professionalism with the current state the PDF export is in. The following features would be extremely helpful (at least): - Cover page (branding/logo or image option, title, display version, display date (Month Year)) - Table of contents - Footer with a branding/logo-option We are also working with images, tables, hints, code blocks, mermaid blocks. Is there any chance that this gets picked up with more priority? I've seen very similar discussions here: #1088 #1063 #1036 #1000 #669 Thanks and regards! Daniel — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#64 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A6F7GSJKY2EIWFE37TW5P6D35IGPDAVCNFSM6AAAAABWG6JAPGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTIOJZGI4TQMQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[naleyjanhelge]

I’d like to add a more detailed clarification of the issues we’re experiencing with the current PDF export:

• When clicking Export to PDF, GitBook shows a preview, but there is no “Save” button – only a Print button.
  If we use the print option and select “Print to PDF,” the resulting PDF looks different from the preview GitBook shows. It also varies depending on which browser is used.

• There is no simple way to apply branding, such as adding a logo to the exported PDF.

• There is no support for tables of contents or contextual elements in the exported file.

• There is no option for a cover page, which is important for professional documentation.

• There is no way to add custom headers/footers, page headers, or page footers to the PDF export or print version.

• The biggest pain point is that the export lacks proper page breaks, causing content to break awkwardly between pages.
  Layout and formatting often look strange in the final PDF or printed output.

This issue goes back to early 2023, and since PDF export is a fundamental feature for many of us, we would really appreciate if this part of the platform could receive some dedicated attention. We truly appreciate GitBook, but reliable and consistent PDF export is critical for our workflow.