Convert Excel to PDF

When is a PDF better than a spreadsheet?

A PDF is better whenever someone should read the numbers but not change them. Send a PDF when sharing a price list, timesheet, budget summary, grade report or invoice. The recipient doesn't need Excel, the figures can't be edited by accident, and the file prints the same on any printer.

A PDF also hides what the reader doesn't need: formulas, cost columns that have been hidden, links to other workbooks and the revision history. That makes it a safer way to share a quote or a report with clients, as long as sensitive sheets are checked and removed from the print output first.

How do you make a spreadsheet fit on one PDF page?

Set the page setup in the workbook before converting, because the converter uses whatever the file says about paper, margins and scaling. Most disappointing spreadsheet PDFs come from print settings, not the converter. Excel has no fixed pages, so a minute in Page Layout view makes a big difference:

• Select the cells to keep and choose Print Area › Set Print Area to leave out scratch columns.
• Use Fit All Columns on One Page for wide tables, and Landscape for anything with more than six or seven columns.
• Turn on Print Titles so header rows repeat on every page of a long list.
• Remove helper sheets and turn off gridlines that don't belong in the final document.

How does the Excel to PDF converter work?

The workbook is uploaded over HTTPS and printed to PDF by LibreOffice Calc running headless in an isolated container. Rendering charts, conditional formatting and page breaks needs a complete office suite, which is why this is one of only three tools on the site that use a server.

Every request gets its own temporary folder, which is removed when the conversion finishes or fails, and the PDF streams straight back to the browser. The container has no internet access, so external data connections are never refreshed and linked workbooks are never fetched. Macros do not run. Only the extension, byte size, status and duration of each request are logged.

What is kept from the workbook and what is lost?

Charts, cell colours, borders, merged cells, number formats and conditional formatting are drawn as they appear in the sheet. Comments, data validation drop-downs and filter buttons are not interactive in a PDF. If a pivot table or formula depends on data refreshed from another file, refresh and save the workbook first, because the converter only sees stored values.

Fonts are matched with metric-compatible equivalents: Calibri is drawn with Carlito and Arial with Liberation Sans, so column widths and row wrapping stay the same. Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts are not installed, and some complex-script fonts are substituted, so text in those scripts may look different or overflow cells.

Why use this converter instead of another online service?

It needs no account, adds no watermark, and deletes the workbook the moment the PDF is returned. Many free converters cap pages, stamp the output or keep files for hours for later download. Here there is a 25 MB limit and a rate limit of 10 conversions per minute, and nothing else.

Workbooks with figures that must never leave the computer, such as payroll or unreleased financials, can be exported locally with File › Save as › PDF in Excel, Numbers or LibreOffice Calc. The result is comparable, since this converter uses the same LibreOffice engine that the desktop suite does.

What can you do with the PDF afterwards?

The finished PDF can be merged, numbered, compressed or signed in the browser. Combine a report and its spreadsheet appendix with Merge PDF, number the pages with Add Page Numbers, or shrink an image-heavy workbook with Compress PDF before emailing it. If a client needs to sign an approved quote, open the PDF in Sign PDF instead of printing and scanning it.