Hi~ I have a fairly simple thing I’d like to do that I can’t figure out how to make work.
For my job, I meet with clients weekly and have to generate reports to be uploaded to the company’s backend. It would be convenient if I could take the reports written in Drafts, and run an action to convert the Markdown to a PDF and open share sheet to save in the write Files location.
However, I’ve already downloaded and tried running this Action, which seems to be the one most referenced for this kind of thing on the forum, but it doesn’t work. I replaced the Workflow mentioned with the “Make PDF” Shortcut found in the Shortcuts Gallery, but the PDF preview generated shows the HTML format tagging all around the text.
If anyone could give me a hint as to what I might be doing wrong, it’d be much appreciated. Thanks!
I’m going to guess the Make PDF shortcut you are using isn’t doing the same thing the conversion workflow is doing. Specifically the change of HTML to rich text.
Check your shortcut and correct it if that is the case, or just use the specified workflow and change to a share at the end rather than opening in GoodNotes.
You can also use “Print” actions to generate PDFs. It’s not a well know iOS feature, but from any print dialog, you can zoom in on the preview and you get a share options in that window which offers the option to mail/message/save to files the PDF version of that print job.
So, start with an action like Print - Markdown, and when the preview comes up, instead of tapping “Print”, zoom in on the preview. You do this by pinching out on the preview (or force touching it on iPhones so equipped). Then use the “Share” button to do something with the PDF.
That was it! Thanks. I wasn’t paying attention to the error dialogue when I tried installing the linked shortcut. I assumed there was an issue but I just needed to allow shortcuts to install untrusted shortcuts before I could install that one. Now it’s working great. Thanks so much!
I actually use that trick pretty regularly and it’s very convenient. I would just like to eliminate as many taps and pinches and such as possible in my workflow. But it’s definitely a good tip that more people should know about. Thanks!
Made an account just to say thank you for this. I would also like to minimize the amount of taps and swipes, but this is an amazing little feature that I knew nothing about until I saw this.
I subscribed to Drafts for the year and I’ve been trying to make it work for me as a replacement for Bear, and this is fantastic.
