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How to Create a PDF Catalog in Magento 2: Easy Guide

By Sanjay JethvaUpdated on Jan 02, 2025 7 min read

Product catalogs are a good way to showcase the products you’re selling. They’re useful for sharing the catalog details off-site with the customers.

For example, here’s what a PDF product catalog looks like:

Magento 2 PDF Catalog

You can have a similar product catalog in your Magento 2 store to showcase product information like images, descriptions, pricing, and more.

In this post, you’ll learn the benefits of PDF catalogs in Magento 2 along with detailed step-by-step instructions and marketing ideas.

Benefits of Using PDF Catalogs for Your Store

Digital catalogs in PDF format offer several advantages to your online business, such as:

  • Ease of shareability – The PDF catalogs can be shared with customers via email, WhatsApp, website, or any platform
  • Offline access to products – The customers can view the product catalogs anytime without internet connection using PDFs
  • Search engine optimization – Increases the chances of ranking document files for the product categories through online catalogs
  • Save time and cost – You can create PDF catalogs without investing much time and money and distribute them efficiently

In addition to being a good marketing instrument, PDF catalogs are also useful to your sales team to gain product knowledge. They can be printed and used as physical catalogs in retail outlets to showcase all the available products.

How to Create a PDF Catalog in Magento 2?

In Magento 2, there is no default feature to generate PDF catalogs from products. Here are other options to achieve this functionality:

  • Use a third-party extension – You can add PDF catalog functionality in your store by using modules like Magento 2 PDF Catalog by Meetanshi. It automatically generates customizable digital catalogs for categories and updates them automatically.
  • Manually create product catalogs – Hire a designer or use online graphics services to create a PDF product catalog manually. It requires a lot of time and effort

Our recommended option is to use an extension to create PDF catalogs from products in Magento 2. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

Step 1: Install Magento 2 PDF Catalog Extension

Go to the Magento 2 PDF Catalog extension page and download the module package.

Screenshot of Magento 2 PDF Catalog extension page

Extract the .zip file in the root of your Magento installation and run the following commands:

  • composer require mpdf/mpdf
  • php bin/magento setup:upgrade
  • php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy –f
  • php bin/magento cache:flush

The PDF catalog functionality will be added to your store.

Step 2: Enable Product Catalog & Customize Settings

In your Magento admin panel, go to Stores > Configuration > PDF Catalog to configure the PDF catalog settings.

Enable the Magento PDF catalog generator functionality. It will create category-wise product catalogs and add a Print button on the category pages. Here, you can upload a cover image to add to the product catalog PDFs and also customize the text color and attributes to include.

You can add more attributes to the PDF catalog by enabling them in the Advanced attribute properties.

Enable pdf catalog extension in Magento 2

Further customize the PDF catalog by adding footer text, choosing date format, and product sorting. You can also choose a specific customer group to display the Print button on the front end.

The module supports building product catalogs in two layouts – Grid & List.

You can fully customize each view from the backend configuration by setting colors for specific elements, heights, and character limits for descriptions, and read more links.

Customize Magento 2 PDF catalog views

Click the “Save” button.

Step 3: Include or Exclude Products from the Catalog

By default, the module includes all the products in their specific category product catalogs. You can remove any specific products from the catalog from the product edit section.

Go to Catalog > Products and remove the product by using the Allow inclusion in PDF catalog option.

Remove product from PDF catalogs

Step 4: Print PDF Catalog

Once the extension is configured, you can easily generate and download PDF catalogs from the admin panel. To generate a PDF catalog of category products, go to Catalog > Manage Categories and select the category you want to generate a catalog for.

Scroll down the the Print Catalog section, select the applicable options, and click the button to generate a catalog.

Print PDF catalog in Magento 2 backend

This will generate and download a PDF catalog of the products in the category.

The selected customer group can also download a PDF catalog from the category page on the front end using the Print button.

Magento 2 PDF catalog download functionality in frontend

They can select the type of catalog PDF Magento 2 to generate and download it.

PDF catalog in Magento 2
Magento 2 PDF Catalog

Create product brochures and customized catalogs and share them with your customers.

Get Extension

Unique Marketing Ideas Using Catalogs in Magento 2

The Magento 2 PDF Catalog extension is a great marketing addition to your online store. Here are some ideas you can utilize the PDF catalogs to reach new customers and improve business sales.

Idea 1: Share with Customers via WhatsApp

WhatsApp is indeed one of the most popular platforms for reaching your customers. You can use the PDF catalogs for marketing via this popular channel.

Here’s how:

  • Create a new category in your store named “New Arrivals
  • Add the new products in your store to the newly created category
  • Use the Magento PDF catalog generator to create and share new products via WhatsApp

This way you can easily announce new products to your customers and get direct traffic to your online store.

Idea 2: Print & Distribute Offline

PDF catalogs are also highly useful off-site – you can print physical copies of the product catalogs from Magento 2 and distribute them amongst the visiting customers.

Your retail store sales team can also carry a physical catalog to showcase the available products in the store.

Idea 3: Add Downloadable Catalogs to Website

Product manufacturers or wholesalers may want to display a Print catalog option on their website. This can help the retail store owners easily download product information from the website.

You can enable the Magento product catalog extension functionality to automatically add a Print catalog feature on the category pages. This way, the visitors can download the catalogs right from the front end without contacting the website admin.

Further, the extension helps you enable this functionality for any specific customer group in your store. This way you can exclude the normal customers while showing the catalogs.

Start Creating PDF Catalogs Today

You see creating Magento catalogs is easy with Meetanshi’s extension. It allows you to automatically generate customized PDF catalogs within a few minutes. You can leverage this extension to empower your marketing and product reach.

Follow the steps and start building Magento catlaog PDFs for your store!

Sanjay Jethva Full Image
Article bySanjay Jethva

Sanjay is the co-founder and CTO of Meetanshi with hands-on expertise with Magento since 2011. He specializes in complex development, integrations, extensions, and customizations. Sanjay is one the top 50 contributor to the Magento community and is recognized by Adobe. His passion for Magento 2 and Shopify solutions has made him a trusted source for businesses seeking to optimize their online stores. He loves sharing technical solutions related to Magento 2 & Shopify.