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Lot of answers here are excellent but there is no way to save it. Even if we can put them in favorites or print them.

What about create a way to save answers in pdf?

Also on meta : Is it possible to convert (and possibly download) the answers/discussions in pdf format? but this discussion was 2 years ago and perhaps today is it a more feasible/interesting idea?

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    $\begingroup$ @Thisismuchhealthier. StackPrinter seems to be working again. (I don't know why it was not working at the time of your comment.) $\endgroup$ Jul 5, 2014 at 10:48
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    $\begingroup$ Why not simply print the page to a PDF printer? $\endgroup$ Jul 8, 2014 at 9:54
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    $\begingroup$ @HagenvonEitzen: I've tried that, and the sidebars and headers and footers are not very pleasing. Also, the page breaking is not at all done intelligently. Hopefully, an integrated approach would do better. $\endgroup$
    – robjohn Mod
    Jul 8, 2014 at 16:20
  • $\begingroup$ A related post on Meta Stack Exchange: Printing out Stack Overflow/Exchange Q&As including comments? $\endgroup$ Jun 20, 2019 at 16:47

2 Answers 2

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For printing a question together with all answers, the best option is still the same as two years ago: use Stack Printer. There is a handy bookmarklet on that page, which allows any question to be saved as PDF directly from the question page. The quality is pretty good.

Or, if you want the Q&A to be formatted just the way you want it, try Save Q&A as LaTeX, which converts the question with answers (and optionally, with comments) into a file that can be copy-pasted into, e.g., writeLaTeX or any other LaTeX compiler. Then get PDF from that. Some conversion errors may still occur; they require a minor manual adjustment of the source.

(I mention writeLaTeX specifically because this is the environment I use for testing the correctness of conversion in Save Q&A as LaTeX. This project is still under development.)


Disclaimer: free version of StackEdit no longer offers saving as PDF

For saving an individual post (question or answer): an improved version of the workflow suggested by Sergio Parreiras:

  1. Click to edit the question/answer.
  2. Copy and paste the contents to StackEdit
  3. Click cancel to close the edit.
  4. From the # menu on the left, select Save as PDF:

save as pdf

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  • $\begingroup$ Cool. Tested on achille hui's answer here math.stackexchange.com/questions/838052/…, it works perfectly well. $\endgroup$
    – Krokop
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:10
  • $\begingroup$ @Krokop That's a great post to test on... but it seems my PDF loses symbols toward the end of the post. Did you check yours toward the end? I replaced the link in the post. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:23
  • $\begingroup$ Yes I check and my PDF is ok... $\endgroup$
    – Krokop
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:32
  • $\begingroup$ Hm, after several tries it worked for me too (I switched from Chrome to Firefox in the process, don't know what made the difference). $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:45
  • $\begingroup$ I have Firefox too so we know that works with this browser but don't know why too :). $\endgroup$
    – Krokop
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:49
  • $\begingroup$ @Krokop and thisismuchhealthier: Is it possible to make it look like a LaTeX file instead of a Word file? $\endgroup$
    – user122283
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:18
  • $\begingroup$ I had not seen the bookmarklet before; that is quite handy. Perhaps it's been too long since I visited StackPrinter. $\endgroup$
    – robjohn Mod
    Jul 8, 2014 at 16:28
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    $\begingroup$ I have to raise awareness that saving as PDF inside Stackedit is now an option you have to pay for. What do ? $\endgroup$ Sep 8, 2014 at 16:57
  • $\begingroup$ @G.T.R Oh no. Updated the post. I suppose this justified mentioning a related project of mine as an alternative. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Sep 8, 2014 at 17:08
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    $\begingroup$ Psst. @Thursday Try this instead of Stackedit to save money! $\endgroup$
    – hrkrshnn
    Sep 16, 2014 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ @GNUEmacs I got a PDF of a poor rendering quality :( $\endgroup$ Dec 10, 2015 at 22:34
  • $\begingroup$ @CarlosMendoza My post lists 3 options, which one produced poor quality pdf? On which post? $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Dec 10, 2015 at 22:36
  • $\begingroup$ I tried the free version of stackedit posted by @GNUEmacs on my answer to this question, that's the one with the problem. By other hand, I also tried the Stack Printer and it does a goob job. $\endgroup$ Dec 10, 2015 at 22:42
  • $\begingroup$ The dropbox link in the 'Save Q&A as LaTeX' linked post is dead. $\endgroup$ Apr 5, 2017 at 15:45
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    $\begingroup$ Why doesn't Stack Edit recognize begin{align*}? What can I use instead? $\endgroup$
    – Dr. Mathva
    May 7, 2019 at 21:38
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This answer is obsolete given the (neat!)Much healthier answer above.

It would be nice to have this feature but meanwhile, an alternative is:

  1. Click to edit the question/answer.
  2. Copy and paste the contents to your favorite $\LaTeX$ editor.
  3. Click cancel to close the edit.
  4. "Get a bunch of LATEX errors caused by Markdown content." (orginally from This is Much Healthier)
  5. Use regular expressions (http://www.regular-expressions.info/) in your editor to remove/change the mark-down content.
  6. Of course, it would be very nice to have a script here doing 5.

As long as you are keeping it for your personal use, I don't see why it would a problem.

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    $\begingroup$ 4. Get a bunch of $\LaTeX$ errors caused by Markdown content. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 2, 2014 at 19:44
  • $\begingroup$ Put another way: MathJax is not the same as LaTeX, though it uses many LaTeX commands (among other things). $\endgroup$ Jul 2, 2014 at 19:56
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    $\begingroup$ Re: step 5, see Atwood's story about how he tried to parse a small subset of Markdown (mini-Markdown, used in comments) with regular expressions. This one was just to handle single asterisks: (?<=[s^,(])*(?=S)(.+?)(?<=S)*(?=[s$,.?!]) And it was still buggy. After Atwood left, SE developers eventually rewrote the mini-Markdown code from scratch (I think). Parsing all of Markdown syntax would be of orders of magnitude more complicated. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 2, 2014 at 21:57
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    $\begingroup$ One more thing: "user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required", so one can do much more with the content than just keep it for personal use. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:39
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    $\begingroup$ @Thisismuchhealthier. For example one can print it as a rug and give mathematical answers to people, so they can feel they walk all over mathematics every day! Or as a set of clothes... One could even tattoo answers on their arms (useful for exams). $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:35
  • $\begingroup$ Or write one's name at the top and hand in as homework. $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:38
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    $\begingroup$ @WillJagy But... attribution required. As long as the URL is there, that's okay though. $\endgroup$
    – user147263
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:44

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