Convert Excel to PDF

1. 1

   Add your spreadsheet

   Drop an XLSX, XLSM, XLS, ODS, CSV or TSV file onto the page, or browse for it. The file is read on your device and is never uploaded.

2. 2

   Choose the sheets

   Convert the first sheet, every sheet, or tick exactly the ones you want. Each sheet can also become its own PDF.

3. 3

   Set the page up

   Orientation, paper size and margins start from the workbook's own print setup and can be overridden. Use Fit to width when a sheet is wider than the paper.

4. 4

   Convert and download

   Press Convert, check the preview, and download. Change any setting and the result is marked out of date so you can re-apply it in one press.

This converter lays your spreadsheet out as a real page rather than dropping its values into a plain table. It reads the workbook's own column widths, row heights, merged cells, number formats, fonts, fills and borders, and it starts from the print setup already saved in the file — so the PDF looks like what you would get by pressing Print in a spreadsheet application.

• Keeps tables and layout. Column widths, row heights, merged cells and hidden rows are all read from the workbook, so columns line up in the PDF exactly as they do on screen.
• Gridlines and headers. Show or hide gridlines, print the A-B-C column letters and row numbers, and repeat the top rows of the sheet on every page.
• Numbers that still look like numbers. Dates, times, currency, percentages, accounting brackets and custom formats are rendered the way the spreadsheet renders them.
• Every sheet, or exactly the ones you want. Convert the first sheet, all of them, or a chosen set — into one PDF or into one file each.
• One file free, batch with Pro. One spreadsheet at a time is free with every layout control included; Pro converts up to twenty workbooks at once and hands them back as a single ZIP.
• Nothing is uploaded. The workbook is read and converted on your device. No copy of it is sent anywhere, which matters when the sheet holds payroll, pricing or client data.

A spreadsheet does not store the text you see. It stores a value and a format, and the format is what turns 46037 into 15/01/26, 1234.5 into $1,234.50 and 0.075 into 7.5%. A converter that reads only the values produces a page of raw numbers that looks completely plausible and is not what the file says at all — a column of dates comes out as five-digit decimals, and nothing about the output suggests anything went wrong.

What is read from each cell

• Number formats. The full format grammar: dates and times, currency and accounting, percentages, fractions, scientific notation, thousands separators, text sections, colour directives such as red negatives, and conditional sections.
• Fonts. Family, size, bold, italic, underline, strike-through and colour, per cell.
• Fills and borders. Solid fills, theme colours with their tints, and every border style from hairline to double, on each of a cell's four sides.
• Alignment. Horizontal and vertical alignment, indent and text wrapping. Where a cell says nothing, numbers align right and text aligns left, as a spreadsheet does.
• Merged cells. A merged block is drawn once, across its whole span, instead of as a grid of empty boxes with the text in the first one.

Where a cell is too narrow for its number, the PDF shows a run of # marks — the same thing the spreadsheet shows, and for the same reason: a truncated number is a different number. If you would rather every value be readable, switch column widths to Fit to content and each column grows to its widest value.

Most of the print settings people fight with have already been set inside the workbook, and this converter reads them. If someone set a print area, only that range is converted. If they set print titles, those rows repeat at the top of every page and those columns at the left. Manual page breaks are honoured, and so are hidden rows and columns, which are left out exactly as a spreadsheet would leave them out.

What you can change

• Which sheets. The first sheet, every sheet, or a chosen set. Hidden sheets are excluded unless you ask for them.
• One file or many. All the chosen sheets in one PDF with page numbers running across them, or one PDF per sheet.
• Repeat header rows. Use the workbook's own print titles, or say how many rows from the top should repeat on every page.
• Ignore the print area. Turn it off to convert the whole used range instead of the saved selection.
• Include hidden rows and columns. Off by default, because a hidden row is usually hidden on purpose.

A spreadsheet is not page-shaped, and a wide one has to be either scaled down or continued on later pages. This converter does both, and it paginates in two directions: a sheet too wide for the paper carries on across further pages in the order the workbook asks for, rather than being quietly cut off at the right margin.

The scaling options

• Automatic. Uses whatever the workbook itself asks for, including its own fit-to-page setting if one is saved.
• Fit to width. Shrinks the sheet until every column fits across one page. This is the setting that turns a twenty-column report from a jigsaw into something readable.
• Fit to one page. Shrinks until the whole sheet fits on a single page, width and height.
• Fixed percentage. Anything from 10% to 400%, the same range a spreadsheet offers.

Orientation, paper size and margins start from the workbook and can each be overridden. Paper runs from A5 through A4, Letter, Legal and A3 to Tabloid, and margins can follow the file or use Normal, Narrow or Wide.

A spreadsheet is a working document: it recalculates, it depends on the reader having the right application, and it invites editing. A PDF is a finished one. Converting fixes what you send at the moment you send it.

• It opens everywhere. A PDF opens on any phone, tablet or computer with no spreadsheet application and no add-ins.
• It prints the way you saw it. Page breaks, column widths and repeating headers are decided once, by you, instead of by whatever settings the recipient happens to have.
• It cannot be edited by accident. Nobody re-sorts a column or overwrites a formula in a PDF.
• Formulas become results. The reader sees the figures, not the workings, and no stale link to another workbook can break them.
• It archives cleanly. A PDF is a stable long-term format; a workbook full of external links is not.

The conversion runs in three stages, and the split is what keeps it fast. The workbook is read once; the layout is recalculated whenever you change a setting; the PDF is written from that layout. Changing the orientation on a large workbook therefore costs a few milliseconds rather than a full re-read of the file.

Inside a conversion

• Read. The workbook's sheets, values, formats, styles, widths, merges and print setup are parsed on your device.
• Lay out. Column widths and row heights are measured, wrapped text is broken into lines, the scale is chosen, and the grid is split into pages in both directions with the repeating bands placed on each.
• Write. Each page is drawn as real, selectable text with its fills, borders and pictures, and the whole file is compressed as it is written.
• Off the main thread. The work happens in the background, so the page stays responsive, progress is shown per file, and a long conversion can be cancelled.

A 100,000-cell workbook converts to a 210-page PDF in about a second on a laptop, and the file it produces is roughly a twentieth the size of what a page-image converter would write.

The list is closed and it is checked against the file's actual bytes when you add it, not against its extension — a spreadsheet often arrives with no file type attached at all, and a renamed PDF often arrives claiming to be one. Anything outside the list is refused immediately, with a link to the tool that does handle it.

• .xlsx and .xlsm — modern Excel workbooks, with full formatting, print setup, merged cells and embedded pictures.
• .xltx and .xltm — Excel templates, read the same way as workbooks.
• .xls — legacy Excel workbooks. Values, number formats, column widths and merges are read; cell colours and borders are not stored in a way this converter can reach, so those sheets convert in black and white.
• .ods — OpenDocument spreadsheets from LibreOffice, Calc and Google Sheets exports, with fills, borders, fonts, alignment and column widths.
• .csv, .tsv and .txt — delimited text. The separator is detected from the file, quoted fields containing commas or line breaks are handled properly, and values that are genuinely numbers are right-aligned while codes such as 007 stay as text.

Everything that makes the PDF correct is free. Orientation, paper size, margins, scaling, gridlines, repeating headers, sheet selection, merged cells, number formats and cell styles are all available on the free plan, because they decide whether the output is usable rather than how much of it you can make.

• Free. One spreadsheet at a time, up to 25 MB and 250,000 cells, with every layout control. Embedded pictures are exported at 150 dpi, which is indistinguishable from the original at reading distance on paper.
• Pro. Up to twenty workbooks at once, delivered as a single ZIP; no imposed size or cell limit, only what your device can handle; and embedded pictures kept at the resolution they were stored at.
• Why cells and not pages. The number of pages a sheet produces depends on the settings — the same workbook is 210 pages at its own column widths and 120 fitted to width in landscape. Cells are what the work actually scales with, so that is what the limit counts.

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