A spreadsheet has no pages until you give it some
A text document is written page by page. A worksheet is not: it is a grid that can run to thousands of rows and dozens of columns, and nothing in it says where a printed page ends. Turning it into a PDF means cutting that grid into pages, and the result depends almost entirely on the page setup saved in the workbook.
That is why the same file can produce a tidy two-page report or forty pages with one column each. The converter does not guess a layout; it applies the settings the workbook already contains, the way printing from a desktop spreadsheet app would.
What happens on the server
The file is converted by LibreOffice Calc running without a screen, using its standard PDF export, with a separate temporary profile for every job. Four input formats are accepted:
- XLSX, the format Excel has used since 2007.
- XLS, the older binary format from Excel 97 to 2003.
- ODS, the OpenDocument spreadsheet format, native to LibreOffice.
- CSV, plain comma-separated text with no formatting or page setup at all.
All visible sheets with content are exported into a single PDF, one after another. Hidden sheets are left out, and so are empty pages. Text in the PDF is real text, so you can search it and copy figures out of it.
Page setup that decides the result
Spend two minutes in the workbook's page settings before converting. These are the options that matter most, with their Excel names:
- Print area (Page Layout, Print Area). Without one, the whole used range is exported. A forgotten value in cell Z900 or a stray formatted cell far below the data can add pages of empty grid. Setting a print area around the real table avoids that.
- Orientation. Tables wider than about 8 to 10 columns usually read better in landscape.
- Scaling. "Fit all columns on one page" is the most useful option: every column fits the width, and the rows continue onto as many pages as needed. Avoid "Fit sheet on one page" for long tables; a 500-row sheet squeezed onto one page becomes unreadably small.
- Print titles (Rows to repeat at top). Repeats the header row on every page, so page 7 of a price list still shows what each column means.
- Gridlines. Excel does not print gridlines by default, and the PDF follows that. Tick "Print" under Gridlines, or add cell borders, if you want the grid visible.
- Headers and footers. A footer with the page number and file name helps anyone who prints the PDF and drops the pages.
Each sheet keeps its own page setup, so check every tab, not only the first one.
Problems that show up in the PDF
- A column on its own page. The table was a little too wide for the paper. Switch to landscape or use "Fit all columns on one page".
- Cells showing ####. The column was only just wide enough on your computer. Fonts that are not available on the server are replaced with similar ones, and a slightly wider substitute no longer fits the number. Widen the column a little, or use a common font for numeric columns.
- A CSV squeezed into one column. The file is read with commas as separators. CSV files exported with semicolons, common in countries where the comma is the decimal mark, end up with everything in column A. Open such a file in a spreadsheet app, save it as XLSX, and convert that instead.
- A CSV printed in portrait with cut columns. A CSV cannot store page settings, so default ones are used. For anything you plan to share, import it into a spreadsheet, set up the page and save as XLSX.
- Charts look slightly different. Charts are redrawn by LibreOffice, so colours, label positions and fonts can shift a little compared with Excel. Check charts with many labels before sending.
Limits and what to do next
Without an account you get one conversion a day for files up to 500 MB; Premium removes the daily limit and accepts up to 4 GB. The uploaded workbook is removed when the PDF is ready, and the PDF expires about an hour after the job was created, so download it right away.
Spreadsheets often travel with other documents. To attach a budget to a cover letter or a report, combine the PDFs with Merge PDF. If you reorganised pages and need numbering that runs across the whole pack, add it afterwards with Add page numbers.