How to Share PDFs Online and Sync PDFs Across Devices

If you’ve never tried the Share option from PDFpen’s File menu, you’re in for a treat. Here’s a quick look at what “sharing” from PDFpen accomplishes, and why you may find it useful in your day-to-day. 

In PDFpen and other Mac apps, you can choose Share from PDFpen’s File menu to send a copy of the PDF document to other apps.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to File and choose Share. The Share menu appears with the apps that you can use to share a PDF. 

Alternatively, look in the upper right of the menu bar and click on the Share button. 

1. Choose:

• Messages to use your Mac’s text-messaging software to send a copy of the PDF as an iMessage, an SMS, or a MMS. Note: You need to have an account configured before you can use this service.
• AirDrop to send a copy of the PDF to a nearby Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
• Notes to send a copy of the PDF to your Mac’s note-taking app.

Here’s what it looks like when you share a PDF file to Notes:

Click on the PDF file from Notes and it will open in PDFpen.

Note: Messages, AirDrop, and Notes are default extensions for sharing PDFs. They appear in the Share menu, unlike other extensions, which you can only see when clicking “More.” If an extension does not appear as an option for you in the Share menu, it means you can’t use it to share a PDF. That’s the case with “Reminders” and “Add to Photos” below.

Use a cloud storage solution to back up your PDF documents and keep your devices in sync. You can choose Apple’s iCloud or a third-party cloud storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. 

Note: Third-party cloud options are helpful when collaborating with Windows/Android users.

Once you create an account in a cloud storage service, saving and syncing is just a matter of dropping files into folders. For more details, check out how to sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod using your computer in Apple Support.

You can access documents in iCloud Drive from within PDFpen via the File > Open and File > Save dialogs. You will see all the iCloud Drive folders just as you do in Finder.

To move documents to/from local storage to iCloud, open a document in PDFpenPro, click the small arrow on the right of the document title, and pick a new location in the Where pop-up menu.

Note: This only works if you have Autosave turned on. If you don’t, use Save As.

If you have PDFpen for iPad & iPhone, you can access documents from any cloud service of your choice from the Files app. For more advanced editing, use PDFpen on Mac.

System Requirements

macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and later, and an Apple ID with an iCloud account.

Want to share and sync PDF files across your Apple devices? Download a free, 30-day trial of PDFpen.