Originally marketed as the “YouTube” for documents, Scribd began its
operation as a way for anyone to publish and host their documents and writing
online. Born out of the need for one of the site’s creators to host his father’s
medical research without having to pay for publication and wait over a year for
the documents to be published, the site gained notoriety in 2009 after signing
a deal with several publications, including The New York Times, Huffington Post,
TechCrunch, and several other blogs and publications to host their
documents, as well as for their Scribd Store, which allowed users to sell digital
copies of their work online.
Since then, Scribd has morphed into an online subscription service, built to
read millions of eBooks, comics, and more online with a Netflix-like
subscription service. Despite this refocus on more mainstream titles and
novels, Scribd is still used by millions of people daily to host and share online
documents using the platform built by the site itself. In the site’s documents
section, you’ll find historical papers, political documents, poll results, and
plenty of other information for use in your college assignments, term papers,
or just as a general document of interest. And while viewing these articles is
free by itself, albeit with some limitations on certain documents, downloading
this information to your computer is limited for often than not.
While you should avoid downloading and using others’ documents without
paying for a monthly Scribd decision, at the end of the day, certain users—
students specifically—may find it difficult to pay for the research and other
documents provided on the website. Luckily, there are some ways around
these restrictions. Though the three methods outlined below are both
occasionally hit or miss, they often can be used to bypass the Scribd security
and subscription measures, making it easy to view the documents necessary
for your next project or paper. Here’s what to do.
METHOD ONE: UPLOADING DOCUMENTS
TECH JUNKIE TV
Our first method for downloading Scribd documents on the web today relies
on uploading a document of your own to a Scribd account, in order to gain
access to the document you want to download. We’ll be performing our test in
Google Chrome, though you should be able to accomplish this in any modern
browser, including Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge. Start by heading over
to Scribd.com and signing up for a new account. Alternatively, if you already
have an account with Scribd, you can use your existing account by logging in.
Scribd supports accounts with both Facebook and Google sign-ins, so starting
a new account is as easy as clicking a button and linking your account. Once
you’ve signed in, find the document you want to download and copy the URL
down to an outside source, like a Google Keep note or Word document.
From here, you’ll want to click the “Download” option on the right side of your
display. This will automatically redirect you to a page designed to help you set
up your Scribd subscription, complete with a 30-day trial. Above this page,
however, you’ll see an option to upload files from your computer, with a button
that reads “Select Files to Upload.” Click this button and, on your computer,
prepare any kind of document. If you have a word processor installed on your
computer, like Word or Apple Pages, you can use that to create a short,
meaningless document. Alternately, you can use Google Docs to create a free
document on your computer, and download it to your device. The document
can contain anything, including straight gibberish; we recommend using
a Lorem Ipsum generator if you’re having trouble figuring out what to write.
When your document is uploaded, provide a title for the new file and hit
“Save.”
Now, grab that URL we saved earlier in this process and paste it into the
address bar at the top of your web browser. A download button should load on
your device, and you’ll be able to save the Scribd document to your computer.
However, we should mention that, thanks to recent updates from Scribd,
we’ve had some difficulties performing this without first editing the HTML code
using the inspect button on your browser. It’s not a perfect solution, but once
you edit the HTML for the View button to lead to your device, you can
download an HTML version of the page, allowing you to take the document
offline. If you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro (check with your school or
teacher), you can convert the HTML document to a PDF.
