How are you creating beautiful PDF's from Coda in 2025?

1

Hi all!

Is there a straightforward and well-supported way to create clean PDF’s using coda data?

If you’ve tried this in coda before you’ll have hit roadblocks like lack of proper header/footer support, page breaks, limited formatting options for text and images, and various small bugs that affect output formatting.

There are some threads with tips & hacks to use HTML in coda docs that can get around some of these issues, but these often rely on unofficial methods:

And there are packs that integrate with external services, but it’s not clear how well-supported these are:

What are you doing to meet this need?

2 Likes
2

Hi,

Personally i use Documint or docmaker.

it works well

3

Hi @Math_24 - thank you. When do you choose to use one vs the other?

4

I’m coming from another platform where I rely heavily on DocsAutomator, which is in my opinion superior to all the ones currently offered here. Problem is…there isn’t currently a direct pack for it. I am working with Rupert from DocsAutomator to either create a pack or at least give me a very clear workflow for the connection through Zapier.

I am willing to possibly be sold on one of the others, but a big part for me is the Google Doc integration (using my existing Google Doc as the template, and outputting a completed Google doc as well as the PDF (which I need for my purposes)

Will be following this thread with interest!

2 Likes
5

both are good but docmaker has some advantages:

  • easy to create a template
  • Takes docx into account
  • takes google docs into account, just share url

cons for me :

  • pricing no flexible
    I mean by flexible paid to the number of generations. ( euros/generation)

vs Documint :

  • proprietary software, so difficult to change
  • flexible pricing
6

I don’t know DocsAutomator but I have a feeling it’s the same as documint.

what does it do better ?

7

First, it works from a Google Doc as a template, which means all that customization available, plus you can very quickly modify any existing Google docs to become a template. Second, the output is both a pdf AND a google doc. In my industry there is a lot of weirdness (I’m in film) and the ability to make additional edits to a doc before it goes live is pretty important.

There is a lot of great options in the manipulation of info itself within DocsA, especially when it comes to pulling in and working with line items.

Here is am image of one of my Call Sheets done with DocsA from AirTable information, which isn’t fundamentally different from Coda table information (I use this image in my setup lol)

CallSheetPileImage
CallSheetPileImage1920×1797 372 KB

And finally, Rupert (the Master of DocsA) is super great, and very responsive to all questions etc.

1 Like
8

Ok, is docMaker like :slight_smile:

but api is limited for DocA ^^’

9

Adding to @Shannon_Bradley 's point about Docs Automator. I wonder if Coda’s Google Sheets Pack could be the bridge between Coda and Docs Automator. So the data would start in a Coda table then using Coda Google Sheets Pack with two-way sync the data is pushed out from the Coda table to Google Sheets. Then, the Google Sheets data is connected to Docs Automator. I saw that Docs Automator syncs to Google Sheets. I’m seeking elegant solutions for this issue as well.