Better Export PDF

Obsidian Better Export PDF

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Better Export PDF is an Obsidian PDF export enhancement plugin that adds the ability to export bookmarks outline, export preview and add page numbers to PDF compared to the official PDF export function.

Features

Compared to the official Export PDF feature:

• 🚀Support export preview
• 🎉Export the outline bookmarks
• 🛩️Customize the margins
• ✨Export the page numbers
• 💥Support add PDF metadata from front matter
• 🎇Export internal links within file
• 🎈Export multiple Markdown files(folder or specified files) into one PDF file
• 🌸Batch export multiple PDF files
• 🍬Support exporting PDFs in any size, and can export all content onto a single page
• ... ...

Installation

In Obsidian go to Settings > Third-party plugins > Community Plugins > Browse and search for Better Export PDF.

Manual installation

1. Download the .zip file from the latest Release, or from any other release version.
2. Unzip into: {VaultFolder}/.obsidian/plugins/
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plug-in.

or use the BRAT Plugin.

Usage

1. Select export target:
   1. In the upper right corner of the current Markdown view, click More options and select Better Export PDF;
   2. Open the command panel and select Better Export PDF: Export Current File to PDF.
2. In the dialog box that is displayed, modify the configuration.
3. Click Export, select the export path, and if you don't need to modify the configuration, you can directly press the Enter key to trigger the export operation.

Set the header and footer

Set page numbers using the Header Template and Footer Template, for example:

<div style="width: 100vw;font-size:10px;text-align:center;">
  <span class="pageNumber"></span> / <span class="totalPages"></span>
</div>

See details <webview>.printToPDF(options).

It can be any HTML fragment, such as adding a base64 image:

<div style="width: 100vw;font-size:10px;text-align:center;">
  <img height="10px" width="10px" src="data:image/svg+xml;base64,xxx..." />
  <span class="title"></span>
</div>

Document level header/footer templates can also be configured in frontMatter:

• headerTemplate
• footerTemplate

Customize the export style

If you want to further customize the PDF export style, you can add custom CSS in the Appearance > CSS Snippet, such as custom fonts and sizes:

@media print {
  body {
    --font-interface-override: "Times New Roman" !important;
    --font-text-override: "Times New Roman" !important;
    --font-print-override: "Times New Roman" !important;
    --font-monospace-override: "Consolas" !important;
    --font-text-size: 20px !important;
    font-family: "Times New Roman" !important;
  }
}

Select Disabled CSS Snippts

First, enable the Select CSS snippets option in the plugin configuration. This will allow you to see the CSS snippets option in the modal for exporting PDFs. From there, you can choose CSS snippets that have not been globally enabled in the Appearance > CSS Fragments section.

Add PDF metadata

PDF Metadata can be added to through frontMatter of the configuration document. Supported field items are:

• title
• author
• keywords
• created_at
• updated_at
• creator
• producer

Export multiple Markdown files

Quick export

Select the folder in the sidebar, right-click the menu Export folder to PDF, you can export the entire folder contents to a PDF file.

Note: This does not guarantee the file export order.

Custom export

Create a new table of contents note, add something like the following, need to add a toc: true document property:

---
toc: true
---

## Table of Contents

[[Note1|Title1]]
[[Note2]]
[[Note2]]

This allows the plugin to export the notes in the order of the internal links. The anchor point of the exported PDF table of contents supports clicking to jump.

Note: When exporting with a Table of Contents file, right click on that toc-file and select Better Export PDF. Do not use Export Folder to PDF.

Folder batch export

Select the folder in the sidebar, right-click the menu Export each file to PDF, you can batch export each file of the entire folder to PDF file.

Export as One Page

In the export dialog, select Custom for Page Size and set Margin to None. Set the page size according to the document's requirements.

Note: You can adjust the concurrency number during the rendering phase when exporting multiple files via Plugin Settings > Limit Concurrency. This can help reduce resource consumption or increase the speed. The default value is 5.

Preview

Export preview

Effect picture

TODO

• Automatically adds internal link content to footnotes/appendices;
• Support pagedjs beautification;
• Support print preview;
• Export multiple Markdown files into one PDF file;
• Improves default @media print css style;
• Support add PDF metadata from front matter;
• Export internal links within file;

Support This Plugin

This plugin takes a lot of work to maintain and continue adding features. If you want to fund the continued development of this plugin you can do so here:

PayPal or WeChat or Alipay