How do PDFs work in SlideHub?

Your company library holds PDFs alongside slides, documents, images and icons. A PDF in SlideHub is a finished file your teams download and send on — a one-pager, a case study, a signed policy — rather than something they pull apart and paste into a deck. SlideHub reads the text inside every PDF you upload, so people find the right one by searching for a phrase in its body, not just its file name.

Example: your team keeps a two-page product one-pager as a PDF. A salesperson searching for "implementation timeline" finds it because that phrase appears on page two, downloads the current version, and attaches it to a customer email — without asking anyone which version is the latest.

How do I add a PDF to the library?

Adding PDFs is done from the manage view by anyone who can manage your company or team library. Every label in bold is exactly what you'll see on screen.

1. Open the manage view and click Pdfs in the asset list on the left. The Manage existing company pdfs page opens on the overview tab.
2. Click the add pdfs tab. You'll see the heading Step 1: Upload pdf(s) and, under it, Upload file (.pdf).
3. Drag your file onto the upload area, or click it to browse. The area prompts you with Drag and drop or select a PDF file to start the upload. PDFs are uploaded one at a time, so repeat these steps for each file.
4. Add the file's labels — categories, subcategories and tags. These are what decide whether your teams find it later, so it's worth doing now.
5. Click through to finish. The PDF is now in the library and your teams can find it.

Tip: If you're still putting a file together, switch Mark as draft on while you upload it. The PDF stays in the manage view where you can work on it, and end users don't see it until you switch the toggle back off.

What can people do with a PDF?

PDFs are download-and-send files. They are not inserted onto a slide the way a slide or an image is.

• In the browser: click Download on the PDF to save the current version.
• In the PowerPoint or Excel task pane: click Download as PDF.
• In Outlook: click Attach as PDF to attach the file straight to the email you're writing. (Please note that files of 20 MB or more can't be attached this way — you'll see The file is too large to attach. Please download it instead. Download it and attach it yourself.)
• Share a direct link: copy a link that opens that exact PDF inside SlideHub, so a colleague lands on the file instead of hunting for it.

What can I set on a PDF?

When you upload a PDF, or open one from the overview tab, you can set:

• Visual pdf label: a short sticker shown on the file's card, for example a client or product name. Optional.
• Mark as high priority: pushes the file up in your teams' results.
• Add to key assets: surfaces the file to end users first. (Please note that key PDFs are surfaced in the browser only, not in the Office task panes.)
• Mark as draft: keeps the file hidden from end users while you're still working on it.
• Disable version warnings: stops SlideHub warning people that they're holding an older copy of this file.

To swap the file itself for a newer one, open the PDF and use Replace file. SlideHub keeps the previous version in the file's history, so nothing is lost.

Can I create a PDF from a slide or a document?

Yes, and it stays up to date on its own. From a presentation or a Word document in your library, choose Create linked PDF. SlideHub generates a PDF from that source and keeps the two connected: when you edit the source, the linked PDF regenerates in the background. While that's happening the file shows Syncing..., and people downloading it get the current version once it finishes.

A linked PDF can't be edited or replaced directly, because its content comes from the source. If you want to take it over and manage it by hand, open it and click Break link. It becomes an ordinary PDF you can replace and edit, and it stops following the source. You can create a new linked PDF from that source again later.

How do people find a PDF?

Two ways, and the second is the one worth knowing about.

• Labels: PDFs use the same categories, subcategories and tags as the rest of your library, so they sit inside the structure you've already built. See Structuring Your SlideHub Library for how to plan that structure, and How does AI tagging of assets work? for letting SlideHub suggest labels for you.
• The text inside the file: SlideHub extracts the text from every page of a PDF you upload and indexes it. Someone searching for a phrase that appears on page seven of a forty-page report will find that report, even if the phrase appears nowhere in its file name, label or tags.

The first page of the PDF becomes its thumbnail, so files are recognisable at a glance in the library.

Who can add and see PDFs?

Adding, editing and deleting PDFs is open to anyone who can manage the library the file lives in — the same permission that covers slides, documents and images. If you can't see the manage view for PDFs, ask an account Owner to give you access.

Whether PDFs appear at all is a company-level setting rather than a per-person one. On the Pdf settings page an account Owner controls two things:

• Company PDFs: set to Enabled to make the PDF library available, or Disabled to hide the feature entirely.
• Restrict PDFs to administrators: set to Everyone so all users see PDFs, or Administrators only to keep the library to administrators while you build it up.

Teams can also switch their own PDF library off independently, so a team that has no use for PDFs isn't shown an empty section.

Only .pdf files can be uploaded. If you try to upload something else you'll see Invalid file type - only PDF files are supported. For the other file types your library holds, see How do I add content to my company library? and How Documents / Word Files work.

Updated on: 09/15/2026