Question 1

What happens to my formulas?

Accepted Answer

Nothing is recalculated. Each formula cell exports its last cached value — the number Excel saved the last time the file was open. If a cell has no cached value at all, the formula text itself is printed (like =SUM(A1:A5)). To refresh the numbers, open the file in Excel or Google Sheets, save, then convert.

Question 2

Do charts, images and cell colours come through?

Accepted Answer

No — this converts the cell data, not the drawing layer. Charts, embedded images, shapes and cell background colours are not rendered; what you get is the actual table: text, numbers, dates and TRUE/FALSE values in a clean grid. Bold text survives; everything else about the decoration does not.

Question 3

What are the size limits?

Accepted Answer

Per sheet the PDF shows the first 100 columns and 500 rows, and the first 10 sheets of a workbook — the tool tells you honestly when something was cut. Very wide tables are fit to the page width with wrapped text, so enormous spreadsheets still produce readable pages rather than confetti.

Question 4

Why is my .xls file rejected?

Accepted Answer

The old binary .xls format (and .xlsb) is not supported — this tool reads the modern .xlsx / .xlsm format that Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice have used by default since 2007. Open your .xls once in any of those, save it as .xlsx, then drop it here. The tool detects this case and tells you exactly that instead of producing garbage.

Excel to PDF

Spreadsheets, cleanly printed

How it works

Frequently asked