How in the world did “export to PDF” function got into production without the most basic option available? PDF without text? Let’s add export to 3D without actual 3D then… guys, come one.

Just a heads up for people that are trying to export their CV from Figma to PDF: don’t mess with the layer opacity of your text, keep it at 100% and normal.

I made the mistake of fiddling with layer opaciy insted of chosing the right shade of gray and was unable to select any text in my PDF. Don’t know how it fits into the overall problem but it might have something to do with it. Hope it helps.

This week, I was able to export a Figma frame to PDF, then open the PDF Preview and Acrobat for macOS and the text was selectable. Seems improvements have been made by the crew at Figma.

Preview of PDF

Hello friend, there is a simple solution,

Select the frame you are going to export and in the export panel, select the .svg format and in the 3 small dots of options, uncheck the outline text, proceed to export it in svg.

You can then open this file in Illustrator or directly in Google crhome and save it again as a pdf with editable text.

If you have many files, you can use the batch processing of illustrator to open and save in PDF format.

I hope it works for you.

Regards

It worked here! Thank you so much!

February 2023 and this has still not been solved… I tried the SVG → chrome → PDF trick but bullet points disappear and other shapes do not keep their proper dimensions. I have been using CopyDoc, which works amazingly, but it’s not free (not sure if it was back when it initially came out). Why should we have to compromise for paid tools when the function natively exists in Figma?

Ran into this problem today. Right now, I’m using this site to convert pdf to a searchable version. Hope it helps you too.

V

Hello guys, I found a very simple solution to export frames to pdf with selectable text and even internal/external links using Figma plugin called “** Pitchdeck Presentation Studio**”.

Here is the video demo:

Plugin link:

Hope it helps 😉

If you have the Adobe Suite : Exporting to svg (unchecking “outline text”) and opening in Illustrator works great.

Bullet points and icons don’t export though, so you’d have to re-add those, but then the export to PDF (export for screens then select PDF as the output) is a great solution: it’s lossless and it’s a small file size.

With this method, I got a ~180 KB PDF with perfect icons instead of 4 MB with Figma PDF export that can get compressed to 1.1 MB but with blurry icons and the text is not selectable.

Hello, a little tip if you paste text from converted Figma’s pdf file and your text look like "Collaboratedwithcross􏰅 " - without whitespaces and adding strange symbols to your text. You can try the way:

Design → Text → LetterSpacing up to 3%

Hope it helps ☀️

That worked!! Thank you:)

This worked for me as well. tHank you for figuring that out! so tricky…

this is the most important tip! avoid opacity and export directly from figma would be fine . now is July 5, 2023

We have provided a new version of the MKitFPdf plugin. PDF export with selected frames, text as text, crop marks, …

Maybe it meets your requirements, it is still a beta version, we would be happy for suggestions, bugs and hints.

→ MKitFPdf-Plugin

For anyone still struggling with this, try Inkspace. I got great results with it. Export the design to SVG (with “outline text” unchecked), open the SVG in Inkspace, and export normally to PDF.

Incredibly frustrating that this is not addressed, I think a lot of designers will be laying out their CVs in Figma, this essentially means the Application Tracking Systems do not pick them up.

Here’s a process that worked for me, giving selectable text in both preview, and Acrobat/Acrobat reader:

• make sure all layers are ‘normal’ with no opacity (if you have grouped layers, make sure these are not set to ‘pass through’, Figma seems to set this option on grouping for some reason)


• remove bullets and have manual paragraphs with bullet characters instead


• export frames to PDF

A further optimisation step was required to get this to a decent filesize (I used Acrobat > Save as Other > reduced Size PDF)

Literally my recruiter just told me my CV had this issue. He copied and pasted my text and it came out with all these strange symbols. I tried the SVG method and the alignment is all messed up. How is this not fixed yet? 🙃

After much searching, this is the only FREE tool that exports a PDF with copyable text that worked for me. CopyDoc Text Kit also works, but it costs around 30 dollar/euro per month after the first 15 uses.

Free PDF Image Compressor

Note: If you have any links in your PDF, they will be exported with border around them. This is also a problem with the native Figma PDF export. It can be solved by doing the following:

Removing strokes from invisible links:

· Export PDF from Figma.

· Open PDF with TextEdit (free app on mac)

· Cmd-F to search for “/Link” (don’t include quotes)

· Check box in upper right “replace”

· In the replace field paste “/Link /Border �0 0 0]” without quotes.

· Click on the “all” button on the right side.

· Click on the “done” button.

· Save.

· Open file in acrobat to verify it still opens (it should)

· All links are now invisible but still present.

Alternatively this can be done programatically in the terminal

I successfully used the following script:

LC_CTYPE=C LANG=C sed ‘s|/Link|/Link /Border N0 0 0]|’ “FILENAME.PDF" > “FILENAME_NOBORDERS.PDF"

Source : Bug: Exporting to PDF adds a random box around my links - #15 by David10

Let me know if anything is unclear. I really hope that helps and that it works for you too!

This actually is such a joke. How old is Figma now? And you can’t even select text from an exported PDF? Did no one in the history of this company ever come up with the brilliant idea of allowing the copying of text from a PDF? Absolute joke.

This is working(:

thanks bro, i spent around two hours to save text selectable, but should have just remove opacity

Thank you very much! It works.

Thank you! It works!

I was having this same issue, however this method of saving works for me. I’m using the Figma app itself on an Apple Macbook Pro.

I’m saving a resume with 2 frames (page 1 and 2).

1.Select both frames in the left-hand Layers column, and in the right column “Design” tab, near the bottom click the + by Export and select PDF as the type of export.

2. This should export 2 PDF files to your machine.

3. Open one exported file in Apple Preview, enable Thumbnails to be viewed. Drag the second PDF file into the Thumbnails column, order as you wish, and then Export from Preview as a PDF and I get a 2-page PDF.

The text is selectable in the PDF export, can be copied, however when highlighted it looks really small height, like the line-height of the text isn’t translated on export correctly. But at least it’s copyable and interactive.

Hey @Adam_Arling are you trying to merge two pages (I’m guessing frames) in a single PDF file and for that you use the workaround with the Preview app? If this is what you re trying to do you might like the Super PDF plugin.

It merges every frame you select into a single PDF file and exports it in super high quality.

If this is not what you are trying to achieve, could you share more? I’d love to help.

THANKS!!! The plugin worked fine