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How To Download Scribd Documents

For Free
 
Random February 15, 2020

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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
First, it’s important to note that this is Method One for a reason. Although we have three
methods on this list, this is the one that we’ve had the most luck with, and as of February
2020, it’s still the one that works reliably. However, it’s not perfect, so if this method ever
goes down, let us know in the comments and try our other two methods below.
Our first method for downloading Scribd documents on the web relies on uploading a
document of your own to a Scribd account 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 using the search bar and
click on it when it appears in the results.
On the next page, you’ll want to click the Download option on the left side of your
display.
This will redirect you to a page designed to help you set up your Scribd subscription,
complete with a 30-day free trial. Doing this requires entering payment information,
however, which we want to avoid. So instead, scroll down until you see Start
Uploading near the bottom of this page.
Click this text and then the Upload button on the popup that appears. This allows you to
upload a document in exchange for another document on Scribd for free. Unless you have
a document of value you’d like to contribute to the site, you can create any kind of
document you want. 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. Alternatively,
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. Just make
sure that it has at least a page or two of text or Scribd won’t accept it as an upload. After
you’ve created this document, go back to the Scribd webpage and click Select
Documents To Upload. When your document is uploaded, provide a title for the new file
and hit Submit.
A new popup will appear at the top of the screen offering to let you download the original
document you wanted to download for free. Just choose your file format (PDF or TXT)
and press Download. You should see your downloaded file in your Downloads folder in
just a few seconds.
And that’s it!

Method Two: Using the Page Source Code

The second of two methods used for viewing Scribd documents, this involves using
Mozilla Firefox to view the page’s source code to gain access to the page’s info. As
mentioned above, we’ve experienced some hit or miss results with this method, but since
it only takes a couple of minutes of your time to try, it’s worth trying anyway. You’ll
know this method has failed if you receive a message that announces an invalid key error.
Otherwise, let’s get going with your Scribd document. This was originally our top-
recommended way to download Scribd documents without paying for a membership, but
we’ve heard from enough users having difficulty with this process to demote it to a
backup method.
Start by navigating Firefox (we can’t suggest using Chrome, as Chrome generates a .swf
file that never manages to download) to the Scribd document you’re looking to save to
your computer. Though Scribd also carries full-length novels and other works of fiction,
we recommend only using this for nonfiction documents and other sources for your
projects, papers, and research. Inside your document’s preview, right-click the document
and select View Page Source from the menu. This will open a new tab in your browser,
displaying the source information for your Scribd target.
In this new page, hit Ctrl+F to open the Find in Page UI in Firefox. In this field, enter the
phrase “access_key,” and upon finding the result in the Scribd source code, highlight and
copy the code to your computer. It should be an alphanumerical code that appears as
‘key-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’. Now head back to the original document page in your
browser and look at the URL at the top of the browser. This time, we’re looking for the
document ID number in the URL of your specific page. Unlike the access key, the
document ID is listed in the URL and consists of several numbers. The URL should
appear as “‘https://www.scribd.com/read/NUMBER/DOCUMENT TITLE.” We’ll be
using the number portion of that link in a moment.

Now, open up a new tab in Firefox. We’re going to create a new URL using the
information provided us by both the access key, the document ID number, and the
following partial URL: “http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?
document_id=NUMBER&access_key=key-ACCESS_KEY”. When you’ve pasted this
URL into your new tab, replace the number section with the document ID and the access
key area with the access key you grabbed earlier. Following this, you’ll have to wait a
few minutes for the page to load as your documents begin to download from the Scribd
servers. Once your document has finished loading, use the print option to print to PDF,
and your document will be saved to your computer.
If this method doesn’t work for you, and you receive some form of error message from
Scribd, retry using the first method listed above. Users have reported to us that their
preferred method uses the document upload method listed above.

Method Three: GreaseMonkey Scripts

For this next step, you’ll need to use one of multiple different Greasemonkey scripts to
download your document, in addition to using Firefox. This has been hit or miss with us
as well, especially as extensions and plugins age and Scribd continues to update their site.
Still, it’s worth mentioning if only for the sake of completion. The first thing you’ll need
to make sure you have is Firefox. Greasemonkey is a Firefox-only extension, and though
Tampermonkey exists for Chrome, we’re going to need to use Firefox for this one. Install
Greasemonkey from the Firefox plugin store, and head over to this site to install the
Scribd Greasemonkey extension. There are several of these that exist online, and each
may be worth trying until you find the correct one for you.

With your Greasemonkey script installed, you should be able to download Scribd
documents within your browser using the download key that appears on the top of the
page. That said, because Scribd is constantly changing their site, we can’t always
guarantee that you’ll be able to find a script that works. In our tests, we found success
using the script here, along with some of the scripts on GreasyFork, which also include
options to de-blur documents on Scribd.

***
Unfortunately, the nature of Scribd means that these methods are far from perfect. Scribd
doesn’t want users to access their document collection for free, and therefore, these
methods are always up in the air for whether or not they’ll work. Typically, trying to force
Scribds hand will get you somewhere, from a full-blown document downloaded from
their servers to a saved and converted HTML document that can be used for PDF files. As
always, we update this article once every couple of months with the newest information
we can, and our comment section is a great way to see who else is having success
downloading from Scribd. None of the methods performed here are by any means
perfect, but with enough time, energy, and effort, making progress within Scribd to gain
access to documents for your homework or studying isn’t too far away.
 

30 thoughts on “How To Download Scribd Documents

For Free”

 dann
 
August 17, 2020 at 5:56 pm
Method 1 might work for documents, but can’t get sheet music anymore. Preview thumbnails show
as a large treble clef, and anything linked to something that looks like that cannot be downloaded.
Instead, when clicking or pasting in that URL you are served up a preview of completely unrelated
content. Doesn’t matter how many times you log in/out, or how documents you upload. They’ve
blocked it. None of the other methods work.

 Alisa
 
September 17, 2020 at 7:01 am
Can someone download a book for me please?

REPLY

 Anica
 
June 21, 2020 at 9:22 pm
Method one works for the first time. However, on the second time, they asked you 5 documents to
upload, not only one.

REPLY

 Debrah
 
June 17, 2020 at 5:15 am
Still works, thanks

REPLY
  Dibs
 
June 17, 2020 at 2:47 am
it’s June 2020 and the method one worked for me (I LOVE YOU PEOPLE, SUCH BIG HELP). The
method two however, I tried to look for the access key from the source but zero searches.

REPLY

 Sue Truong
 
June 15, 2020 at 5:32 am
15.6.2020 Method 1 is still working so far. I’m using Microsoft Edge. Hope that helps

REPLY

 NVS
 
May 10, 2020 at 2:04 am
nice method one still working perfectly! i found this article very helpful thank you!

REPLY

 lena
 
February 25, 2020 at 12:45 pm
Method 1 still working indeed

REPLY

 Dino
 
January 22, 2020 at 12:20 pm
Method 1 still working :)

 Eszter Makai
 
January 22, 2020 at 4:48 pm
Hey, how could you replace the link? For me it’s not possible. Thanks!

REPLY

 Gordon Ramsay
 
October 29, 2019 at 12:39 pm
Method 1 has been patched

REPLY

 Favour
 
October 9, 2019 at 4:09 pm
Hi there…
Method 1 worked for me. I am using Microsoft’s edge browser (if you find that relevant).

REPLY

 Rhea
 
October 2, 2019 at 8:31 pm
Method 1 no longer works

REPLY

 Mackenzie
 
September 5, 2019 at 1:58 pm
method one worked for me! thanks for saving me from buying an 800$ textbook!

REPLY

 Dongerino Frapuccino
 
September 3, 2019 at 3:36 pm
Worked like a charm, thank you! :D

REPLY

 hinami
 
August 27, 2019 at 7:31 pm
28th Aug 2019: Method 1 no longer works as there is no Download link anymore, only a link to sign
up for the trial.

 Unknown
 
August 29, 2019 at 2:09 am
As of 29th Aug 2019 the download link is there

REPLY
  Pete
 
August 3, 2019 at 12:26 pm
Method 1 still works, August 3rd 2019 (Downloaded Charisma on Command by Charlie Houpert).
Fun fact: I actually uploaded something useful instead of garbage. Method 2 on FireFox gave me the
same .swf file as on Chrome.

 Test
 
August 12, 2019 at 12:46 pm
I use to get Method 1 to work… now I can not. It does not give me a “download” option anymore
before I upload… Just 30 day trial button

 helda luz barrientos

 
August 22, 2019 at 9:43 am
no tengo targeta de credito

 Sahil
 
July 24, 2019 at 9:23 am
Didn’t bother with the 1st method. Tried the 2nd method, but didn’t work for me. The third method
worked brilliantly. Installed lots of un-blur script at once, so don’t know which one worked, however
now I have access to the document I wanted. So, thank you so much for the hack. Loved it!

REPLY

 Matheus Justino
 
July 7, 2019 at 1:20 pm
#1 worked! Thanks a lot! <3

REPLY

 Mark
 
June 30, 2019 at 7:32 am
Method #1 Worked perfectly ! Thanks !

REPLY

 Alex
 
June 10, 2019 at 6:02 am
#1 is Excellent! It worked for me. Thanks!

REPLY

 Rex
 
June 5, 2019 at 12:09 am
June the 5th 2019
Didn’t try Method 1 as it asks me to put my payment info (and I won’t)
Method 2 didn’t work
Method 3 worked partially, had to download GreaseFork unblurring add-ons to GreaseMonkey to
make it work (tried different ones, some didn’t work)

REPLY

 Wibble
 
May 10, 2019 at 8:41 am
Method 1 (upload any document) working May 2019. Thanks.

REPLY

 Kemmler
 
May 3, 2019 at 2:49 am
Thanks dude! It works perfectly! May 2019

REPLY

 Lomo
 
April 13, 2019 at 3:21 am
Yes…. It’s work for me April 2019

REPLY

 BT
 
April 4, 2019 at 2:58 pm
Thanks, works on april 2019 :))

REPLY

 Prince Daniels
 
April 3, 2019 at 2:51 pm
Method 1 worked perfectly. Thanks so much.

REPLY

 Kurt
 
March 27, 2019 at 5:19 pm
I have a subscription to scribd. I have also 5 Greaseonkey downloaders. How do I actually save a
document to my PC? (and not as a swf.)

REPLY

 kaiki
 
March 9, 2019 at 1:45 am
method 1 is still working..its great

REPLY

 Downloader
 
February 19, 2019 at 8:07 am
Method 1 still works on 19, Feb 2019. Thank you !

REPLY

 Bob Loblaw
 
February 16, 2019 at 5:09 pm
First still works – Feb 19, 2019. Generated a Lorem Ipsum doc, saved it as html, opened it in Word,
saved as a .docx then uploaded it and downloaded the file I needed

REPLY

 Krong
 
December 10, 2018 at 5:02 am
Thank you so much! 1st Method works hehe

REPLY

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