Just converting an Excel to a PDF isn’t something troublesome, but making it a neat, presentable & printable PDF document is a bit tricky. I’ll teach you how to format and set up the page for a presentable PDF, as well as a variety of options to save your Excel file as a PDF.
Essential Formatting and Settings to Save Excel as PDF
There are a variety of reasons why you would wish to save an Excel document as a PDF rather than a spreadsheet. For example, if you simply want a section of a bigger document to be sent out or if you don’t want it to be editable and to keep the functions, or formula hidden.
Here, we’ve got an Excel file containing a dataset of some random salesman and their corresponding sales item and quantity.
For formatting the document, you’ve to follow the below steps consciously:
1. Setting Up the Page
- First, go to the Page Layout tab from the Ribbon. Under the Page Setup section, you’ll find various options bundled together.
- Secondly, navigate to the Margins option to select the margin size you want to use from the list. By default, the top and bottom margins are 0.75 inches, while the left and right margins are 0.70 inches.
- Thirdly, from the Orientation option, you can choose whether you want your final output to be Landscape or Portrait.
- Finally, from the Size option, you can prefer the page size of your finished document from an enormous variety.
So, set these based on how you want your completed PDF to look, as they operate largely the same way they do in a Word document.
2. Determining a Print Area and Getting It Fitted
In some cases, you might need to specify the print area from a larger dataset. Follow the below steps.
- Initially, select all of the cells that are desired to be printed in your document using click and drag.
- Then, go to Page Setup > Print Area > Set Print Area. This will result in a sparse grey line around the entire printed area.
Another essential step is to specify the Scale to Fit option. There are three options to the right of Page Setup: Width, Height, and Scale. The Width and Height choices let you specify how many pages your table’s rows and columns will show on. On the other hand, the total resizing of your print area is determined by scale.
3. Exploring Sheet Options
Here’s a synopsis of the numerous customization options available in this menu:
- Print Titles: You can freeze certain rows and columns of the sheet in place so that they show up on every page.
- Gridlines: This allows you to choose whether or not to display gridlines.
- Headings: This allows you to display headings, which are the fixed alphabetical (A, B, C) and numerical (1, 2, 3) labels on the x-axis and y-axis of Excel spreadsheets.
- Comments, Notes and Errors: This displays the embedded comments, notes, and error warnings in the final document.
- Print Order: You can choose whether to build a document by going down first or going right first.
This is how we do the Page Setup before saving an Excel file as a PDF.
Save Excel File as PDF: 6 Ways
We tried to show you the simplest and most straightforward workflow to save Excel file as PDF. Here we’ll know 6 tricky ways about it.
1. Saving as PDF If the File Is Saved in OneDrive
To save an Excel file in OneDrive, you’ve to turn on the AutoSave option from the Quick Access Toolbar.
Then, a window will be opened named How do I turn on AutoSave. After that, you’ve to click on the OneDrive-Personal option.
Now your file is saved in your OneDrive and will be automatically updated whenever you make any change in the file.
1.1. Saving Excel File as PDF in OneDrive
At this time, I’ll tell you how to save an Excel file as a PDF in OneDrive
- Firstly, navigate to the File tab from Ribbon
- Secondly, go to the Save a Copy tab from the left side panel and it will automatically suggest the OneDrive
- Thirdly, from the drop-down list select PDF (*.pdf) and click on Save.
- Then, we can see that our file is saved in PDF format in our OneDrive’s desired folder.
1.2. Saving Excel File as PDF on Local PC
Now, I’ll show you how to save an Excel file as a PDF on our local PC
- At first, you’ve to go to the File
- Then, click on Save a Copy and select the Browse option
- Now, we can see a Save as window. You’ve to select your desired file path and from the Save as type select PDF and click on Save. The file will be saved in your preferred folder on your local PC.
2. Save as PDF If the File Is Saved on Local PC
- First, go to the File tab, then click on Save As and select
- Then, there will be a Save As window. Here, you’ve to select your preferred file location, write down the file name, select PDF in the Save as type option, and click on Save.
- Now, you can see your Excel file is saved in PDF format in your pre-defined location.
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3. Exporting as PDF
To save your file in this method, you’ve to follow the steps below:
- First, go to the File tab as we’ve shown before several times.
- In the File menu, there’s an option named Go to this tab and select Create PDF/XPS Document. Then press the Create PDF/XPS button.
- Then, select your convenient file location for saving the file, select PDF in the drop-down list of the Save as type option, and click on the Publish button in the Publish as PDF or XPS named floating window.
4. Applying Print to PDF Feature
If you use Windows 10, then you can get the in-built Print to PDF support which makes saving an Excel file as a PDF very easy. Just follow my steps given below:
- First, click on the File tab stationed at the top menu. Click on the Print option on the left pane.
- Then, select Microsoft Print to PDF from the Printer Also, you can adjust the page orientation, size and margins if you need them to be. If all thing is set, you are ready to press the Print button.
- Eventually, you can see a new window named Save Print Output As. Here, select the convenient file location, write down the name of your file and click on
You’ll get your file in PDF format in your pre-defined location.
5. Importing PDF or XPS Command on Quick Access Toolbar
We can also publish our Excel file as a PDF by using PDF or XPS Command on the Quick Access Toolbar. For this, we’ve to:
- Right-click in any place on the Quick Access Toolbar and then, choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the menu.
- By the previous action, you will open a window named Excel Options. Select the Quick Access Toolbar from the menu, choose All Commands from the drop-down list, search for Publish as PDF or XPS, press the Add button and click on OK. A command will be added to the Quick Access Toolbar.
Now, clicking on the Publish as PDF or XPS command from the Quick Access Toolbar will open the Publish as PDF or XPS Here, click on your preferred directory, select PDF in the Save as type option and press the Publish button.
Your file will be saved in your desired location in PDF format.
6. Using Email as PDF Attachment Command on Quick Access Toolbar
Sometimes we’ve to send our Excel files in PDF format via email. To do this, first, we convert our Excel file into PDF format and then attach the file to an Email body which takes a lot more steps. Here I’ll show you how you can easily do this job with less effort.
Please follow the below steps:
- Right-click in any place on the Quick Access Toolbar and then, choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar from the menu.
- By the previous action, you will open a window named Excel Options. Select Quick Access Toolbar from the menu, choose All Commands from the drop-down list, search for E-mail as PDF Attachment, press Add button and click on A command that will be added to the Quick Access Toolbar.
- Now, if you click on the E-mail as PDF Attachment command on the Quick Access Toolbar, you can see an Outlook window to be opened with an Excel file saved in PDF format as an attachment. From here you can send the file easily to anyone.
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Conclusion
Saving an Excel file as a PDF document is a very common task, but making it presentable, readable, and printable is a sophisticated one. So, at first, we tried to show you the processes of page setup & formatting for an attractive, neat, and clean PDF. Also, we have shown 6 ways to save your Excel file as a PDF.
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- How to Save Excel File as CSV
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