What you should know
XLSX has been the Excel workbook format since 2007. Like DOCX, it is a ZIP archive of XML files: each sheet, the shared strings, styles and formulas are described separately. The format is standardised (Office Open XML) and read by LibreOffice, Google Sheets and Numbers.
A workbook stores both formulas and their last computed result. That result is what most conversion tools read, FileXvert included: the PDF shows values as Excel displayed them when the file was saved.
Strengths
- The standard business format for tabular data
- Several sheets, formulas and formatting in a single file
- Read by every common office suite
- Open structure, readable without Excel by dedicated tools
Limitations to know
- Poorly suited to distribution: the recipient needs a spreadsheet app
- Display depends on the software and on column widths
- Macros (.xlsm files) carry security risks
- A file produced by a tool other than Excel may not contain the results of its formulas
When to use it
Keep XLSX for working on data: calculations, sorting, filtering. To send a table for reading, a PDF is safer: it opens everywhere and cannot be changed by mistake.
Quality, size and compatibility
To PDF, FileXvert takes the displayed values of each sheet — text, numbers, dates, percentages — into a grid with column letters and row numbers. Colours, borders, merged cells, charts and images are not reproduced.
Frequently asked questions
- Do formulas appear in the PDF?
- No: their result appears, as Excel computed it at the last save. Open and save the file again in Excel if a value looks out of date.
- Are all the workbook's sheets converted?
- Yes, in tab order. A sheet too wide for one page is split into bands of columns, on successive pages.