Convert Excel to PDF

A workbook as a PDF can be shared with someone who doesn’t have Excel, printed, or archived in a fixed state: a price list, a rota, a timesheet, a quote. With several sheets, each one is preceded by its name. The rows the workbook repeats at the top of each printed page serve as the header; otherwise the first row made up only of text or, under a title above the table, the first row of text after it; under the information lines of a statement (account number, period), separated from the table by an empty row, it is the table’s column titles. That header is bold, shaded grey and repeated at the top of every page; the title is not. Cells get a thin border, and, when the sheet has no footer, pages are numbered at the bottom when there is more than one.

Values are printed as they are stored, with at most 15 significant digits, as in the spreadsheet (a stored value of 0.30000000000000004 prints as 0.3), and with the decimals their format shows: 0.25 rather than 25% and 1,234.50 without a currency symbol, which a message points out, and dates in the 2024-03-15 format (with the time, midnight included, when the cell’s format shows it). The thousands separator of a format such as #,##0 is printed (1,234,567). Fractions (1 1/4), scientific notation (1.23E+05), minutes past the hour ([mm]:ss) and negatives in brackets print as the workbook shows them; a format’s colour or condition and dates written in words are not kept, which a message points out with the cells. Conditional formatting (a colour that depends on the value) is not printed, which a message points out with its ranges and rules. Leading zeros of a code (01000) are kept, and a link is printed followed by its address. The page size and orientation a sheet’s page setup gives are kept (if you force A4 or Letter, only the orientation is). A sheet with a print area prints only its cells, as Excel and LibreOffice do, and a message lists the filled cells left out. The sheet’s headers and footers are printed on every page, with the page number, the number of pages and the sheet and file names (the date and time are those of the conversion); a picture or the file’s folder they show is not printed, which a message says. The solid background colour of cells that hold something is kept (not that of an empty cell, nor patterns and gradients, with no message); on a dark fill, light text (a white header on blue) keeps its colour, and other coloured text is printed in black (a message names those cells). Margins and scaling are ignored. Hidden sheets, rows and columns are included, and a message lists them, so delete them if they shouldn’t appear in the PDF.