How To Upload PDF files in your WordPress website?

Sharing documents and media on your website comes in handy for a wide range of purposes. Whether you’re providing your users necessary documents, written forms, schedule plans, and other types of documents. But simply dropping a document or pdf link onto your WordPress doesn’t necessarily mean that your page or blog will be necessary accessible or structured.
By allowing yourself to upload PDF files to WordPress, you can easily provide users with various fill up forms, necessary documents and much more. WordPress by itself supports various types of documents files including PDF and DOC files. By taking the necessary steps, you can also add in tons of added nifty features such as download links, online viewing and much more.
Therefore, for today’s agenda of Beautiful Themes will be explaining how to upload Pdf to WordPress. The tutorial will be making full use of various media and images to help you understand the entire process of uploading WordPress Pdf.
Native way to upload PDF to WordPress
The most basic way to upload PDF to WordPress is by simply using the Upload file block. Using a File block on the Gutenberg editor, you can simply drag in the document file onto your post or upload them directly through media library.
To do this, first, open your post and click on the Add block button on the editor toolbar on the top left. From here you can click on the Common blocks section and choose the File option.
On this newly added button, you can either simply drag in the document file or upload directly using the Media library. Simply click on the Upload option to open a window and manually browse through your files to find the appropriate document and open it.
You can also change the name of your document as well as your download text using this feature. Using the toolbar above the block, you can choose between various width sizes and aligning of the block as well. This way, you can natively upload Document files onto your WordPress website.
How to upload PDF to WordPress using Plugins:
There are tons of dedicated plugins available on the internet that allow you to easily upload and insert PDFs onto your posts and pages. While many of them are great options, some of our personal recommendations are:
1) PDF Embedder

PDF Embedder is a simple easy to use WordPress plugin that lets you easily upload PDF to WordPress websites as well as embed them. The plugin makes use of Javascript instead of Iframes to make it more flexible in terms of appearance. Change the embed window’s height and width to your desire or let the plugin to easily auto detect the PDF and resize it to its original size and appearance.
The plugin also comes with a PDF viewer with page viewing features so your users can directly access the PDF on your website without downloading any files. While the free version doesn’t let you insert a separate download link for the PDFs, you can easily work around this by using the instructions above to directly link your PDF onto your posts.
Key features:
- Highly flexible in terms of appearance and sizing.
- Extremely easy to upload and embed PDFs onto the page.
- Online PDF viewer lets users access the PDF directly from your website.
2) Google Doc Embedder

Google Doc embedder is more than just a simple WordPress PDF uploader. The plugin provides a complete solution to uploading and embedding documents on your posts and pages. With the help of Google’s Online document viewer, you can allow inline viewing for your users as well as insert download links.
The plugin doesn’t require any Flash or PDF browser plugins to run either meaning your document is accessible by virtually everyone. Simply upload your PDF and use the service to allow users to make full use of your provided documents.
Key features:
- Provides embedding features for PDfs, Doc files, Powerpoint and excel files, and other documents.
- Provides inline viewing and downloading features
- Allows you to embed non-document files such as PSD files, OTF/TTF fonts, Rar/zip files, TIFF images and more.
3) Embed Any Document
Embed any document is a full document upload solution that lets all types of users, beginner or experienced ones, to easily insert fully accessible document files on your WordPress website. The plugin also provides you with the option of inline viewing on your website and even lets you choose between Microsoft online viewer and Google docs viewer for this.
The upload and embed button is easily integrated onto your post editor and with a simple click of a button, you can enable your documents easily onto your posts. The embedded document can be viewed on a PC or mobile perfectly. Furthermore, the clutter-free, easy to use UI means your viewers can easily read your documents with 0 difficulties.
Key features:
- Online document viewing using Microsoft Online viewer or Google docs viewer.
- Mobile friendly, Cross browser compatible Document embeds.
- Easy to embed, upload and enable PDF and various other types of document files.
How to upload PDF to WordPress using a WordPress plugin:
The process to upload PDF to WordPress and embed them onto your pages is quite simple using any of the plugins we’ve suggested. For this demonstration, we’ll be using Embed any document because of its simplicity and flexibility. So, go ahead and install the Embed Any Document plugin. If you are not aware of how to do so, consider referring to this article.
Adding Embed Document block:
Once you’ve installed your plugin, open any WordPress post or page to edit it. To start the embed process, we’ll need to open our Embed document block first. To do so, click on the Add block button on the top left of the editing toolbar. Then, on the list provided to you, scroll down and click on Embeds. Following this, click on the Document option to enable your Embed document block. Alternatively, you can simply search Embed document on the search bar provided to you to find the necessary block.
Upload document in Embed block:
Next, click on the Add document in the embed document block to upload your document and link it. By default in the free version, you are free to either upload your document directly or link it using a URL.
To directly upload the document, click on the Upload Document to open the media library window. Click on Upload files on the top and either click on Select files and manually search for your document. Or, if you want, you can simply drag the document to this window to upload it.
Then, name your document appropriately and give it a description/caption if you want and click on Select when you’re ready. After this, you will be led to the Advanced options screen where you can change your Document embed’s features.
This includes changing the width and height of the embed, providing a download link as well as changing the download link text and choosing between the Google docs viewer and Microsoft office online for online viewing of the document. Once you choose the options appropriately, click on Insert to embed the document.
Your uploaded document should now be embedded directly onto your post/page. The URL embed feature is quite similar, with the only change being that instead of uploading your document, you can simply copy and paste in your PDF’s direct link to the given URL to embed it. A quick reminder would be to make sure that the URL link ends with the appropriate extension i.e. PDF or DOC.
Video Tutorial
If you want a more detailed tutorial on this, click on the video below.
Concluding:
Thus, using both the native upload file feature or WordPress plugins, you can easily embed and upload PDF to WordPress. The number of ways you can use this feature is endless, from providing documents and notes to users to providing fill-up forms and sign-up forms for various services.
Similarly, if you want to learn more about adding various content, you can check some of our other articles on our website:
- How to create a Professional contact form on WordPress?
- Adding an Image to WordPress Sidebar?
- How to add a creative WordPress photo gallery?