Export a Google AI Studio chat to PDF or Word
Markdown is the best format to keep a conversation in, but it is not what you send to someone who will just double-click it. For that you want a PDF, which looks the same everywhere, or a Word file, which the other person can edit and comment on. AI Studio has no way to produce either, and printing the page to PDF can miss the parts of a long chat that are not drawn on screen. AI Studio Exporter writes both directly from the conversation.
PDF and Word are part of the one-time Pro licence. Markdown, JSON and plain text stay free.
#How to do it
- Install AI Studio Exporter and activate your Pro licence in its settings.
- Open the conversation on aistudio.google.com.
- Click the extension's icon, choose PDF or Word from the format list, and click Export this conversation.
If the conversation has attachments, the download is a ZIP holding the document and an attachments/ folder. Extract it first: links to the attachments are relative to the document, and most PDF readers will not follow a link out of a compressed archive.
#What the PDF looks like
An A4 document with page numbers.
- Every message sits on a tinted band with a coloured rule down its left edge, so you can tell user messages, model answers and reasoning apart at a glance. Reasoning also changes the colour of its text, so the difference survives printing in greyscale.
- Markdown is rendered, not shown raw: headings, bold, italic, inline code, lists, block quotes and rules.
- Fenced code blocks and tables sit in a shaded, monospaced box.
- Attachments, the link back to the conversation, Markdown links and bare URLs are all clickable.
#What the Word file looks like
A .docx that opens in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs. It has the same structure as the PDF: shaded paragraphs with a coloured left border per role, rendered Markdown, monospaced code blocks and hyperlinked attachments. Because it is a normal Word document you can edit it, add comments and track changes, which is the reason to choose it over a PDF.
#The one limit: non-Latin text in PDFs
The PDF is generated with the standard PDF fonts, which cover Latin only. Smart quotes, dashes and ellipses are handled, but characters outside that range, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Devanagari, Kannada, Cyrillic and emoji, are replaced with a question mark.
The extension checks for this and warns you before you download. If your conversation is not in a Latin script, you have two good options:
- Choose Word, which has no such limit, because Word substitutes fonts itself.
- Choose HTML, open the file in your browser and use the browser's print dialog to save it as a PDF, which uses your system fonts.
#Tips
- Long conversations: both formats handle hundreds of messages. If it is too long to read comfortably, turn off reasoning in the settings before you export, and the thinking turns are left out.
- Hiding details: model settings, the system instruction, timestamps and token counts each have a switch, so a PDF meant for a client can be just the conversation.
- Sharing safely: a chat can contain things you did not mean to include. Check the file, and the attachments folder, before you send it.
#Free alternatives
If you do not want to buy Pro, export Markdown for free and convert it with any tool you already use: most editors and converters turn Markdown into PDF or Word. You lose the role-coloured layout, and you handle the attachments yourself, but for a single short chat it is enough.
#Questions
#Is the PDF a screenshot of the page?
No. It is generated from the conversation data, so text is selectable and searchable, links work, and nothing is cut off at the edge of the screen.
#Can I export a whole library as PDFs?
Yes. The whole-library export (Pro) writes one folder per conversation, each with its PDF or Word file, plus an index. See back up all your AI Studio chats.
#Why is my Chinese or Hindi text showing as question marks in the PDF?
That is the Latin-only font limit above. Use Word, or export HTML and print to PDF from the browser.
#What is in the formats reference?
Every format, with examples, is described in the formats documentation.