How to Post a PDF on LinkedIn (Documents and Carousels)

How to post a PDF on LinkedIn from a computer

1. Click Start a post It’s at the top of your feed on linkedin.com.
2. Click + and choose Add a document The document option is hidden at first. Click the + at the bottom of the post window (on some screens, three dots), then Add a document.
3. Choose your file Click Choose file, pick the PDF on your computer and click Open. LinkedIn shows a preview of the pages.
4. Add a title and click Done The title shows on the post, so make it say what the document is for, like “Q3 hiring report: 5 findings”.
5. Write a description and click Post Tell people why it’s worth opening. Up to 3,000 characters, but only the first lines show before “…more”.

How to post a PDF on LinkedIn from your phone

1. Tap Post The plus sign in the bar at the bottom of the LinkedIn app.
2. Tap More (…), then the document icon The document icon looks like a sheet of paper.
3. Choose the PDF Pick it from your phone or from a cloud folder.
4. Add a title and tap Next Then write your description.
5. Tap Post Open the post afterwards and swipe through it once.

LinkedIn document posts: what LinkedIn accepts

How to get a PDF ready for LinkedIn

1. Save it as a PDF yourself. LinkedIn takes PowerPoint and Word files, but a PDF you exported shows exactly the pages you checked.
2. Use portrait or square pages if you can. Landscape pages, like a standard slide deck, show small on a phone.
3. Keep real text, not a scan. Screen readers can’t read a scanned or picture-only PDF.
4. Make page one the cover. It’s what people see in the feed before they open the rest.
5. Keep it under 100 MB. Large photos are what make PDFs big. Shrink them before you export.

The free LinkedIn PDF carousel checker reads your file on your device and flags wrong page sizes, blurry pictures, text too small for a phone, the page count and the file size. Have a set of pictures instead? Combine images into one PDF first.

Turn a long PDF into a carousel

A 40-page report rarely gets read in the feed. Its five best points, one per slide, often do. aiCarousels reads your PDF and turns it into a carousel at 4:5, then posts it to your LinkedIn profile as a document. The full walkthrough is in PDF to carousel.

What a PDF post looks like

A six-page PDF at 4:5. The description asks the question, the document title gives the promise, and the pages do the rest.

Other ways to share a PDF on LinkedIn

• Keep it on your profile. A post moves down the feed over time. To keep a document where profile visitors find it, see how to add a Featured section.
• Link to it. You can post a link to a PDF hosted elsewhere, but people have to leave LinkedIn to read it. In Buffer’s 2023 look at over a million LinkedIn posts, link posts averaged a 2.7% engagement rate against 4.2% for PDF carousels.
• Other attachments. For pictures, videos and other files in a post, see how to add attachments to LinkedIn posts.

More ways to post well on LinkedIn are in our other LinkedIn how-tos.

When a PDF won’t post

• The upload stops or fails. Check the file is under 100 MB and 300 pages. Shrink the photos, or split a long document.
• The pages look tiny. They’re landscape. Re-export at portrait or square.
• The pages look blurry. The pictures inside were small to begin with. The PDF checker shows which ones.
• You spotted a mistake after posting. You can edit the description from the post’s three-dot menu, but not the file. Fix the PDF, delete the post and post it again.
• It went up as a grid of pictures. You added images, not a document. Use Add a document.