Once in a while we all need some kind of document, it may be a business plan presentation, rental contract, non-disclosure agreement, or even a name change request form. In most cases, Googling the document may ultimately get you what you need, but it’s both time consuming and frustrating. Below, I want to go through 3 excellent resources that can provide you with any professional document or form template for free.
(1) Docstoc - Extremely useful community-powered service for sharing all kinds of business document templates. If you need a professional document, Docstoc is the first place to check out. Whether it’s a legal document, a business form or whatever is out there. Docstoc was launched just recently but already counts over 65.000 user-submitted documents, covering legal, business, financial, technology, and education areas.
For all Docstoc features and video demo check out Docstoc profile here.
(2) Gazhoo - Unlike Docstoc, Gazhoo is a marketplace for legal, financial and business documents, case studies and research papers. Mainly it’s a place to buy and sell professional documents. However, with the exception of few scarce document types (i.e. market research papers) most of the listed documents are free. So, it’s a pretty good resource as well.
(3) Scribd - Scribd has the biggest document collection, but it’s not focused on professional documents alone. It’s more like a virtual document library, where anyone can freely upload and share any kind of text documents (jokes, facts, stories, legal, presentations, etc.). Although, there is a good deal of useless stuff, it still has lots of legal forms and document templates. Read more: Scribd - Online Document Sharing.
Are you aware of any other similar websites? Share them in comments 
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Filed Under: Cool Websites ¦ Lists of tools
Tags: business, documents, excel, file sharing, office, office worker, pdf, presentations, word
Docstoc is a rip-off of Scribd. Gazhoo is a little different in that it’s a marketplace where uploaders are selling their documents.
Scribd and Docstoc are similar services but each serves different needs. Scribd is more like Youtube for text files, it’s designed towards community. Docstoc on the other hand is just a resource for professional documents.
I have use scribd, it’s nice for general documents, but I prefer to design my own
I’ve used http://www.paynetglobal.com for quick and dirty contracts. completely free ad supported site.
Thanks for sharing. I only knew about Scrib. Now I can upload on more sources yey! I wonder if I can save PSD ( photoshop format ) there. Anyway, grate post!
I am not sure about it but I think Scribd supports PSD images as well.
None of these sites had any templates for iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) as far as I could see. Pretty useless then.
Well, most of the windows folks still use Powerpoint, Word and Excel. On top of that OpenOffice supports them as well.
Nice post. I personally like Scribd the most out of the three.
http://searchdocs.net
Here you can find more resources and a global search engine.
thanks to all : so @ cactus for searchdocs.net
Great article. We decided to concentrate on post production interactivity. Therefore the output of all documents in http://www.edocr.com is pdfs. Whilst we do have consumer oriented documents, our focus is on servicing businesses. Best regards Manoj
I’m going to use this information. Thanks.
This stuff is gold for small businesses. Many thanks for posting
Gazhoo will be interesting to watch over time as it is the newest of the 3 sites. They have come up with a business model that makes sense for users; financial incentive to sellers; access to quality documents for cheap for buyers. One user seems to have made $1,500 selling documents so far. This is the start of something.
I’ve found the documents at http://www.free-legal-document.com most useful - well constructed, written in plain English and easy to edit.
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Couple of free ipages iwork mac templates here. Simple request by email. http://www.FraserValleyLinks.com
Docstoc is really cool.
Scribd was letting backlinks into pages, but does not allow it anymore. Since January of 2008 they changed their policy. Their sites works great and does an outstanding job uploading and translating documents from various formats. I am going to have to experiment a little with the other two.
esnips.com is also a site worth checking out..
You can also try http://www.anydocs.co.uk for free UK Document templates. Legal documents, business documents, rental and tenancy agreements etc are all available for free
http://www.anydocs.co.uk