I’ve had some document that I couldn’t read on Android phone or iPad showing error because of read only mode, that the mobile devices could not handle. I wanted to read it on other devices than the PC, so I wrote a little ‘hack’  in JS.

Note 1: It was tested on Chrome Browser.

Note 2: It converts pages to jpg images. I think it could be done preserving text, but he didn’t have more time for this and jpg solution was sufficient.

Note 3: If you’re getting only part of the document visible, try zooming out your browser and then run the script.

Step by step:

1. Open the document in Google Docs
2. Scroll to the bottom of the document, so all the pages are present
3. Open Developer Tools on separate window and choose the Console tab
4. Paste the code below (and hit enter)

   let jspdf = document.createElement("script");
   
   jspdf.onload = function () {
   
       let pdf = new jsPDF();
       let elements = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
       for (let i in elements) {
           let img = elements[i];
           console.log("add img ", img);
           if (!/^blob:/.test(img.src)) {
               console.log("invalid src");
               continue;
           }
           let can = document.createElement('canvas');
           let con = can.getContext("2d");
           can.width = img.width;
           can.height = img.height;
           con.drawImage(img, 0, 0, img.width, img.height);
           let imgData = can.toDataURL("image/jpeg", 1.0);
           pdf.addImage(imgData, 'JPEG', 0, 0);
           pdf.addPage();
       }
   
       pdf.save("download.pdf");
   };
   
   jspdf.src = 'https'+'://'+'cdnjs'+'.cloudflare'+'.com/ajax/libs/jspdf/1.5.3/jspdf.debug.js'; /* had to set it like this, because disqus was breaking the link.. */
   document.body.appendChild(jspdf);
   
   

5. Now the PDF should be downloaded

What it does? It iterates trough the document checking for images (Google Drive stores pages as images) then writes it’s contents to a PDF.

Leave a comment if it works for you.