How to Convert Excel Files to PDF Format

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Converting Excel files to PDF makes it easy for anyone to open, even without Office installed. At the same time, printing and sending Excel spreadsheets is also easier. In addition to converting Excel files to PDF directly from the Excel program, you can also use an online conversion service if you do not have Excel installed on your computer.

Table of Contents

Using the Excel program (for Windows)

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Select the part of the spreadsheet you want to convert to PDF (optional). If you’re only converting part of a spreadsheet to PDF, select it right away. If not, refer to the next step.

Note, converting from PDF back to Excel is not easy, but this method will help protect the original.

Click on the “File” tab. If you are using an older version of Excel, click the “File” menu.

Then click “Export”. With Excel 2010 or earlier, select “Save As”.

Select “Create PDF/XPS”. With Excel 2010 or earlier, select “PDF” from the “Save as type” drop-down menu in the “Save As” window.

Click the button . Options… . This will allow you to adjust the settings of the PDF file you are about to create.

Select what to display in the PDF file. In the Options window, you can choose the number of pages to display in the PDF file, or select the entire workbook or only the current sheet, and the PDF file can also have the properties of the original document.

After selecting the content to convert, click the OK button.

Select optimization (optional). Above the Options… button, you can choose how to optimize the PDF. Most people choose “Standard” unless the spreadsheet is too large.

Name and save the file. Name the PDF file and click the Publish button to create the PDF (for Excel 2010 or earlier, click the Save button.

Review the PDF file. By default, the PDF file opens after it’s created for you to review. If you cannot open the PDF file, it may be because you do not have a PDF reader installed. ^{[1] X Research Source}

You can’t edit directly into a PDF, so if you need to make changes, you have to edit in Excel and then create a new PDF.

Using Excel 2011 (for Mac)

Make sure headers and footers on all sheets are the same (optional). The Excel 2011 program allows saving all pages in a PDF file only if the header and footer of each page are the same. Otherwise each sheet will be saved as a separate PDF file, but then you can also easily join the individual files together. ^{[2] X Research Source}

Select all the sheets in the spreadsheet. Click the tab of the first sheet, hold down the Shift key, and then click the tab of the last sheet to select all sheets.
Click the Layout tab and then “Header & Footer”.
Click the Customize Header… and Customize Footer… buttons to edit the headers and footers for all sheets.

Select the part of the spreadsheet you want to convert to PDF (optional). If you only want to convert part of the spreadsheet to PDF, select that part right away. If not, refer to the next step.

Note, converting from PDF back to Excel is not easy, but this method will help protect your originals.

Click on the File menu and select “Save As”. Select the path to the location where you want to save the file and give it a name.

Click the Format drop-down menu and select “PDF”. This will allow you to save a copy of the spreadsheet as a PDF.

Select the content to be included in the PDF file. At the bottom of the window, you can choose between “Workbook”, “Sheet”, or “Selection” (section).

Click on . Save to create a PDF file. If the headers don’t match, each sheet will generate a separate PDF. Note, this also sometimes happens even when the header and footer are completely matched.

Merge separate PDF files (if needed). If the conversion process creates many separate PDF files, you can join them together easily using Finder.

Open the folder containing the PDF file and select all the files that you want to merge.
Click the File menu and choose “Create” → “Combine Files into Single PDF”.

Review the PDF file. Double-click the PDF file to open it. This will open the file in Preview, allowing you to review the file before sending it. You can’t edit directly to a PDF, so if you need to make changes, you’ll have to edit in Excel and then recreate the new PDF.

Steps

Using the Excel program (for Windows)

Using Excel 2011 (for Mac)

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