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Desktop app

Excel to PDF converter

Coming to the PDFCheetah desktop app

Turn an Excel spreadsheet into a PDF, in the PDFCheetah desktop app.

What it will do

Excel to PDF will open an Excel workbook (.xlsx or .xls) and save its sheets as a PDF laid out the way Excel prints them: the same column widths, page breaks, number formats and charts.

Excel to PDF covers .xlsx, which every recent version of Excel saves, and the older .xls. A PDF of a workbook is what it would print: each formula becomes the number it shows, hidden rows and columns are left out, and nothing in the PDF can be sorted, filtered or recalculated. Keep the workbook if you will need to work with the data again.

It will run in the PDFCheetah desktop app, on your own computer, with nothing uploaded.

Why it needs the desktop app

A spreadsheet has no pages until a program works them out: how wide each column is, where a wide sheet splits, what fits on a sheet of paper and how each formula's result is shown. Getting that right takes a full office engine.

The engine the desktop app will carry, LibreOffice, is far too large to download into a browser tab every time you open a page. The app installs it once and converts on your computer.

Save it as a PDF today

Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers can all save a spreadsheet as a PDF. Here is how, step by step.

  • CSV to PDF. If you can save the sheet as CSV, PDFCheetah turns it into a table PDF in your browser today. Formatting and charts do not come with it.

Microsoft Excel

  1. Open the file in Excel.
  2. Choose File, then Save As (Save a Copy in some versions).
  3. Set the file type, or File Format on a Mac, to PDF.
  4. On Windows, Options lets you save the whole workbook rather than only the sheet you are on. To keep a wide sheet one page across, set Page Layout, then Width, to 1 page first.
  5. Choose Save, or Export on a Mac.

Google Sheets

  1. Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets.
  2. Choose File, then Download, then PDF (.pdf).
  3. Choose which sheets to export, the paper size and the scale (Fit to width keeps every column on the page), then choose Export.

This way uploads your file to Google Drive. The others on this page work on your own computer.

LibreOffice Calc (free, works offline)

  1. Open the file in LibreOffice Calc.
  2. Choose File, then Export As, then Export as PDF.
  3. Pick the pages and the image quality you want, then choose Export.

Numbers on a Mac

  1. Open the file in Numbers, which reads Microsoft Office files.
  2. Choose File, then Export To, then PDF.
  3. Choose Next, name the PDF, then choose Export.

Any program that can print

  1. Open the file and choose Print.
  2. On Windows, pick Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer. On a Mac, open the PDF menu at the bottom of the print window and choose Save as PDF.
  3. Choose Print or Save, and pick where the PDF goes.

Printing to PDF keeps what is on the page, but links and the document's headings are usually lost.

Nothing on this page converts a file today. PDFCheetah's web tools turn text, Markdown, CSV and pictures into PDFs in your browser, but not Office documents.

The desktop app

The PDFCheetah desktop app is being built for Windows, macOS and Linux, to do the work a browser tab cannot, on your own computer. Its download page goes up when the app is published.

One email, when this tool is ready in the desktop app. No newsletter, and we do not pass it on.

Common questions

Is Excel to PDF free?
The ways to save a spreadsheet as a PDF on this page are free today. In the desktop app, Office to PDF is planned as part of Pro, which has no price yet, so there is nothing to buy here.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Nothing on this page takes a file. The desktop app will convert on your own computer, the way every PDFCheetah tool works in your browser. Of the ways above, only Google's apps upload your file, to Google Drive.
When will it be ready?
There is no date yet. Leave your email above and we will send one message when it is ready in the desktop app.