What you should know
Excel to PDF turns a workbook into a document for reading: a table the recipient opens without a spreadsheet app, cannot change by mistake, and can print cleanly.
FileXvert reads the values of each sheet, as Excel displayed them when the file was saved, and lays them out as a table on landscape A4, with Excel's column letters and row numbers. Long text wraps inside its cell.
Strengths
- Every sheet, in tab order
- Dates, percentages, numbers and booleans shown as in Excel
- A sheet too wide for the page is split into bands of columns rather than shrunk
- Excel's landmarks kept: column letters and row numbers
Limitations to know
- Colours, borders, fonts and merged cells are not reproduced
- The workbook's charts and images are not carried over
- Formulas appear as their last saved result, not recalculated
- Characters outside the Latin alphabet (Greek, arrows, emojis) are removed
When to use it
Convert to PDF to send figures to be read: a statement, a schedule, a list, a summary. If formatting is part of the message, such as a quote in company colours, use the PDF export of Excel or LibreOffice instead.
Quality, size and compatibility
The content is complete: every displayed value appears in the PDF, in 8-point Helvetica, on a grid that keeps Excel's landmarks. A very long cell wraps onto up to six lines, beyond which it is abbreviated.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is a calculated cell empty?
- Because the file does not contain its formula's result, which happens when it was produced by a tool other than Excel. Open it in Excel or LibreOffice, save it, then convert it again.
- Are old .xls files accepted?
- No: only the .xlsx format, used by Excel since 2007, is supported. Open an .xls file in Excel or LibreOffice and save it as .xlsx.