Excel to PDF
Convert an Excel workbook into a PDF.
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Select a spreadsheet
or drag and drop here
Accepted formats: XLS, XLSX, ODS
Processing…
Quick facts
- What it does
- Renders a spreadsheet as a PDF using the print layout stored in the workbook — page size, orientation, print area and scaling.
- Input
- XLS, XLSX or ODS
- Output
- Processing
- On our server
- Files uploaded?
- Yes, temporarily
- Account required?
- No
- Best for
- Sending figures to somebody who should read them rather than edit them, or attaching a sheet to a report.
- Main limitation
- A wide sheet with no print area set will break across pages wherever the width runs out. Set the print area and fit-to-width in the spreadsheet first; the converter follows that setup rather than guessing a better one.
How to use this tool
- Choose a spreadsheet — .xlsx, .xls or .ods.
- Press Apply to send it for conversion over an encrypted connection.
- Wait while each sheet is paginated and rendered.
- Download the PDF.
Why use iBuildPDF
The awkward part of this conversion is not the file format, it is pagination. A spreadsheet has no pages until something decides where to put the breaks, and the only sensible answer is to use the page setup already saved in the workbook. That is what happens here, which means a sheet that prints badly from Excel will convert badly too — and fixing it in Excel fixes it here.
How it works
The workbook is opened, each sheet laid out according to its own print settings, and the resulting pages written to a single PDF. Numbers keep their cell formatting, so a value displayed to two decimal places is written that way rather than in full.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my sheet split across several pages?
Because it is wider than the page and nothing in the workbook says otherwise. Open it in your spreadsheet program, set the print area, choose landscape, and set scaling to fit all columns on one page. Save, then convert — the converter uses that setup.
Does it convert every sheet or only the active one?
Every sheet that is not hidden, in tab order, as one PDF. Hide the sheets you do not want before converting.
Are formulas converted?
Their results are. A PDF has no formulas, so what you get is the values as displayed — which is usually the point of sending a PDF rather than the workbook.
Can I go the other way?
Yes, with PDF to Excel, though it is a harder problem: that tool extracts tables it can recognise, and a PDF that only looks like a table does not always contain one.
My header row does not repeat on the later pages.
That is the print titles setting, and it lives in the workbook rather than here. In Excel it is Page Layout, then Print Titles, then Rows to repeat at top. Set it, save, and convert again — the converter follows the workbook's print setup.
Read more about this
Continue with your PDF
Your file is ready. These are the things people usually do next.