Excel to PDF

The results will. Excel stores the last calculated value of every formula in the file, and the PDF shows that value; nothing is recalculated, so after changing a workbook, save it in Excel before converting. A workbook written by a program that did not store its results shows those cells empty until it is opened and saved in Excel or LibreOffice. Currency symbols, thousands separators, decimals, percentages and bracketed negatives follow each cell's format, except, for now, some Accounting and Comma Style formats, which can print a stray asterisk, such as $* 1,234.50; if you see that, switch those cells to Currency or Number before converting. Dates are written as year-month-day, such as 2026-03-15, whatever date format the sheet uses, and a cell holding only a time gets a placeholder date in front, such as 1899-12-30 12:00; to show the time alone, turn it into text first, for example with =TEXT(A2,"hh:mm"). Fractions and scientific notation appear as plain numbers.

If Excel is installed, its own File > Save As (or Export) > PDF keeps charts, wrapped text, print areas and fit-to-page scaling, which this tool does not read or reproduce. Use this when Excel is not installed, such as on a Chromebook, a phone or a shared computer, and you would rather not upload the workbook to an online converter. Charts and pictures are left out, and the notes say so; to include a chart, save it as a picture from Excel, turn it into a page with JPG to PDF and combine the two files with Merge PDF. Hidden sheets and rows hidden in Excel are left out. Hidden columns are not reliable: depending on how the workbook stores one, its contents can still print, as can rows and columns hidden in LibreOffice. Delete, rather than hide, anything that must not be in the PDF.

No. Columns are drawn at the widths the sheet gives them and never shrunk, so the text stays readable, and a sheet wider than the page continues on the next page with the next band of columns, headed with the sheet name and a range such as columns A–H. Excel's fit-to-page scaling, print area and manual page breaks are not read. To get fewer bands, narrow the columns in Excel, or delete the ones you do not need from a copy of the workbook, before converting.

Yes, if it is frozen. Rows frozen at the top of a sheet with Freeze Panes are repeated under the sheet name at the top of every page, with a line beneath them, much as print titles work in Excel. Excel's own Rows to repeat at top setting is not read, so freeze the header row before converting if a long table needs it.

Each cell is drawn on a single line. As in Excel, a long label runs on into the cells beside it while they are empty; where the next cell has something in it, the text is shortened to fit and ends in an ellipsis. Wrap text is not reproduced, so a cell that wraps onto several lines in Excel is cut short here, and a number too wide for its column is shortened the same way, where Excel would show ####. Widen the column in Excel and convert again. A line break typed inside a cell is removed, so the words either side run together; replace line breaks with spaces before converting where that matters. A carriage return stored in the text can print as _x000D_, and Japanese text saved with a phonetic reading prints the reading straight after it.

Fill colours, text colours, bold, italic and each cell's horizontal alignment are kept, but a lighter or darker shade of a theme colour is drawn as the base colour, so a pale accent fill prints in the full accent colour and a grey picked as a shade of white prints white. The banding and header colours of a range formatted with Format as Table are not drawn. Cell borders are not drawn; instead a faint line runs under every row so the grid stays readable, and conditional formatting is not applied. Every cell is set in Helvetica at 8.5 pt whatever font the sheet uses, so the page looks tidy but not identical. Text in other alphabets is drawn with this device's fonts as small images, readable but not searchable.