Excel to PDF
Converter

How to convert Excel to PDF

1. Click Choose files or drop your workbooks onto the page. You can add several; each one becomes its own PDF.
2. Conversion starts right away with the default settings: automatic orientation, A4 paper and the first row treated as a header.
3. To change Orientation, Page size or First row is a header, use the settings panel on the right, then click Apply to all files.
4. Save each PDF from the list, or click Download all (.zip).

What ends up in the PDF

Each visible sheet is read cell by cell and drawn as a table with light gray grid lines. Hidden sheets are skipped. When a workbook has more than one visible sheet, each sheet starts on a new page with its name as a small bold title.

Values appear as they’re formatted in the workbook, so dates and currency look the way they do in Excel rather than as raw serial numbers. A formula cell shows the result that was saved with the file. Nothing is recalculated.

Empty rows and columns at the end of a sheet are trimmed off. Columns where most values are numbers are right-aligned so the figures line up. Text size is picked per sheet: it starts at 9 pt and shrinks to as little as 5.5 pt for wide sheets, and long text wraps inside its cell.

What isn’t carried over

If the PDF has to match your formatted sheet exactly, Excel’s own Save as PDF is the better route. This tool is for turning the data into a tidy table you can share or print in a few seconds, on any device, without Excel installed.

• Fill colors, fonts, borders and conditional formatting. Every table uses the same plain style.
• Charts, pictures and shapes.
• Merged cells, plus Excel’s column widths and row heights. The layout is worked out fresh from the content.
• Print areas, manual page breaks, and the headers and footers set up in Page Layout.

What the settings do

• Orientation. Auto (landscape if wide) estimates the width of each table and switches to landscape when it won’t fit across a portrait page. Portrait and Landscape force one or the other for every sheet.
• Page size. A4, US Letter or A3. A3 gives very wide sheets more room before the text has to shrink.
• First row is a header. On by default. The first row of each sheet is shaded and bold, and it repeats at the top of every page the table runs onto. Turn it off when row one is ordinary data.

Common problems and fixes

• The text is tiny. The sheet has a lot of columns. Choose A3 and Landscape, or delete columns you don’t need before converting.
• A sheet is missing. It’s hidden in the workbook. Right-click a sheet tab in Excel, choose Unhide, save, and convert again.
• The file won’t open. It may be password-protected or damaged. Remove the password in Excel first.
• Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese text looks right but can’t be selected. The PDF’s built-in fonts only cover Western European characters, so other scripts are drawn as small images. They print and display correctly but aren’t searchable.

Privacy

The workbook is read and the PDF is written by JavaScript running in your browser. Budgets, client lists and payroll sheets stay on your computer. Have a CSV file instead? CSV to PDF uses the same table layout.