Has anyone succeeded in Publishing Excalidraw drawings?

[guitarvydas]

Has anyone succeeded in Publishing Excalidraw drawings?

I still don’t how to Publish drawings. The first question is “is it me or is this a more general issue?”

thanks
pt

[CawlinTeffid]

I don’t know much about Publish or Excalidraw, but as far as I know Publish doesn’t support plugins, so you’d probably need to export to an image file.

[guitarvydas]

Thanks! You saved me a lot of wasted time head-scratching…

Checking: Do you mean “export to PDF”? Or, do you mean something else? Then, just drag’n’drop the PDF file into my Obsidian document?

[Dor]

“Export as image”

[CawlinTeffid]

PDFs for web content are an act of desperation. I was guessing Excalidraw has a way to save as JPG/PNG/etc. (Dor’s answer suggests that’s true).

And yeah, put the resulting file in your vault (if it didn’t already save there).

[Dor]

@CawlinTeffid

I was guessing Excalidraw has a way to save as JPG/PNG/etc

PNG or SVG

[guitarvydas]

Thanks @CawlinTeffid @Dor . I was looking at the Obsidian menu (which only offers PDF export). I expect to have 10’s if not 100’s of drawings. I am not wedded to Excalidraw, but it is convenient to use in Obsidian. I am open to suggestions on how to do this better. Knowing that it is “not me” is helpful. I will study the Excalidraw options more carefully (it is this close (fingers almost pinched) to working - drawings show up in .PDF export and in slides, but not in Publish - tantalizing…)

[CawlinTeffid]

Try the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P or the >_ icon in the ribbon) and type “Excalidraw” or “export”.

[Craig]

You can configure Excalidraw to automatically export your drawings as PNGs or SVGs in the same folder as your drawing, and keep them up-to-date as your drawing changes. You can then embed the PNG in your page instead of the Excalidraw drawing, and have an up-to-date image that (I assume) Publish will handle gracefully.

Caveat: I don’t use Publish, but I’ve used this method with other plugins like Advanced Slides and it works well for me.

[guitarvydas]

For the record: I need to set 3 options, then remember to hit the Save (floppy disk) icon in Excalidraw. This combination appears to work with Publish (remember to press the Add Linked button during Publishing). The Excalidraw options are: Embed & Export>>“Type of file to insert into the document” (PNG), Auto-export Settings>>“Keep the .SVG and/or .PNG in sync …” (ON), Auto-export Settings>>“Auto-export PNG” (ON).