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How to Export Your LinkedIn Profile as a PDF (and Its Limits)

LinkedIn's built-in Save to PDF is the quickest way to get your profile as a document — but it truncates key sections. Here's how to do it, and how to get a complete, editable resume instead.

Sometimes you just need your LinkedIn profile as a file — to attach to an email, hand to a recruiter, or use as the starting point for a resume. LinkedIn has a built-in export, and it takes about 15 seconds. But it comes with a few limits worth knowing before you rely on it.

How to save your LinkedIn profile as a PDF

On desktop:

  1. Go to your own profile (linkedin.com/in/your-name).
  2. Click the More button in your intro section (next to Add profile section / Open to).
  3. Choose Save to PDF.
  4. LinkedIn generates a PDF and downloads it automatically.

On the mobile app, open your profile, tap the More (•••) button, and choose Save to PDF. That is the whole process — no settings, no template choices.

What the LinkedIn PDF is good for

The Save-to-PDF export is genuinely handy when you need a quick, official-looking snapshot of your profile:

  • Attaching to a casual email or message.
  • A recruiter who just asked for “your LinkedIn as a PDF.”
  • A backup of your profile at a point in time.

It is text-based, so it is technically readable — a fine starting point.

Where it falls short

The catch is that LinkedIn’s PDF is a fixed, compressed export, not a resume you control. In practice you will hit these limits:

  • It truncates sections. Long lists get cut: skills are often reduced to your top few, education beyond a handful of entries can be dropped, and some certifications go missing. If you have a rich profile, expect to lose detail.
  • You cannot edit it. The layout is locked. You cannot reorder sections, rewrite a weak bullet, remove an old role, or tailor it to a specific job.
  • It is not tailored. It is your entire profile, dumped as-is — which is the opposite of what a strong resume should be. A resume is a focused, per-job document, not a full history. (More on that in our LinkedIn-to-resume guide.)
  • The layout is LinkedIn’s, not yours. Generic styling, LinkedIn branding, and a format you cannot adjust for length or emphasis.

So it works as a snapshot, but it is a weak basis for actually applying to jobs.

A better option: import, edit, export

If your goal is a resume you will send to employers, you want the profile data and the ability to shape it. That is the gap a dedicated importer fills.

With exportmyresume.com, the flow is:

  1. Import your LinkedIn profile — it reads every section, including the ones the PDF export tends to drop, and rebuilds them as editable fields.
  2. Edit freely — reorder, rewrite bullets with numbers, trim old roles, and tailor to the job.
  3. Export a clean, ATS-friendly PDF, DOCX or plain-text file.

Because the export is real, selectable text in a single-column layout, it parses correctly in applicant tracking systems — which the pretty-but-locked LinkedIn PDF was never designed for. See what makes a resume ATS-friendly for why that matters.

Bottom line

Use LinkedIn’s Save to PDF when you need a fast snapshot of your profile. When you need an actual resume — complete, editable, tailored, and machine-readable — start from your profile but build the document somewhere you can control it. You already wrote the content on LinkedIn; the last step is turning it into something built for the job you want.