Excel to PDF Converter
Turn spreadsheets into tidy PDFs for sharing and printing. Free, no signup — converted on our own server with LibreOffice.
Drop a spreadsheet here or click to choose
A PDF freezes your formulas into ink
The moment a spreadsheet becomes a PDF, every calculated cell stops being a calculation. A cell holding =SUM(B2:B40) is printed as whatever number it displayed at that instant. Change the underlying data later and the PDF will not follow, which is exactly why people send them. A PDF is a statement of what the numbers were, not a live model.
The same is true of anything else dynamic. Volatile functions like TODAY and NOW freeze at their last calculated value. Links to other workbooks are resolved to whatever was cached. Data connections and queries do not travel. If you need the recipient to change inputs and see new results, send the workbook, not a PDF.
One knock-on effect catches people out: if the spreadsheet showed an error such as #REF! or #DIV/0! anywhere, that error text prints faithfully into the PDF. Fix errors before converting, because they are far more visible on paper than in a scrolling grid.
Set your print area before you convert
Spreadsheets are infinite in both directions. PDFs are a stack of fixed-size pages. Something has to give, and the conversion resolves it using exactly the same print settings your spreadsheet software would use, because it is a real office engine doing real pagination.
That means a sheet 30 columns wide will spill onto extra pages: columns A to M on page one, N to Z on page two, and so on, with the rows repeating down each block. The fix is to configure this in the original file before you upload it. Four settings do nearly all the work:
- Print area. Restrict the output to the range that matters, so working columns and scratch calculations off to the right are excluded.
- Orientation. Landscape fits roughly forty per cent more columns per page than portrait.
- Scaling. Fit all columns on one page is the single most useful option for a wide table.
- Repeat header rows. Setting row 1 to repeat at the top means every page of a long table stays readable.
Manual page breaks, hidden rows and columns, and per-sheet print ranges are all respected as well. If a sheet is hidden in the workbook it will not appear in the PDF.
What each input format gives you
XLSX and legacy XLS workbooks convert with their formatting intact: cell borders, fills, fonts, merged cells, number formats, conditional formatting and charts. Multiple worksheets are handled in order, so a three-sheet workbook produces one PDF covering all three.
ODS files behave the same way, since OpenDocument is the office engine's native spreadsheet format.
CSV is the outlier. A CSV has no formatting at all: no column widths, no fonts, no number formats, no bold. It is a plain text file with commas in it. Converting one directly produces a readable but unstyled grid, with default column widths that may truncate long values. If the appearance matters, open the CSV in a spreadsheet program first, widen the columns, set your number formats, save as XLSX, and convert that instead.
How the conversion runs
This is not a browser-only tool. Paginating a spreadsheet needs a full office engine, which no browser tab can provide, so your workbook is uploaded to a conversion service and rendered there rather than on your device.
What happens in order: the file uploads and you see a progress percentage, the job enters a queue, then LibreOffice renders it and the status changes to converting and finally to done. Two jobs run at once, and the status display tells you how many are ahead of you while you wait. A single conversion is given three minutes before it is stopped, so a huge workbook with thousands of rows of conditional formatting may time out. The upload limit is 50 MB.
As for how long anything is kept: the notice above the tool says within the hour, job records expire on a one hour timer, and your uploaded workbook is discarded as soon as the PDF has been produced.
Related conversions
For decks and documents rather than spreadsheets, use PowerPoint to PDF and Word to PDF, which run through the same engine. If you want the spreadsheet's data as structured data rather than a page, CSV to JSON converts an exported CSV in your browser. And the general Document Converter covers the full list of format pairs if you need something less common, such as XLSX out to ODS.
Questions
Do my formulas still work in the PDF?
No. Every formula is printed as the value it was showing at the time of conversion. A PDF cannot recalculate. Send the workbook itself if the recipient needs to change inputs.
Why is my table split across several pages sideways?
Because it is wider than a page. Set the print area, switch to landscape, or use fit-all-columns-to-one-page scaling in your spreadsheet software before uploading. Those settings are read and applied during conversion.
Are all worksheets included?
Visible sheets are converted in order into a single PDF. Hidden sheets are skipped, as are rows and columns you have hidden.
Is my spreadsheet uploaded somewhere?
Yes. The conversion happens on a server rather than in your browser. The file is uploaded, rendered with LibreOffice, and returned as a PDF, and the page states it is deleted within an hour.
Why does my CSV look plain?
Because a CSV stores only values and separators, with no styling information whatsoever. Open it in a spreadsheet application, format it, save as XLSX, then convert that file.