CECO PDF

Excel to PDF, the sheets as they would print

A spreadsheet, as pages

Drop an .xlsx, .xls or .ods file on the convert page. A spreadsheet has no pages until it is printed, so it comes out the way LibreOffice would print it. Where the file has print settings of its own, a paper size, a print area or page breaks, they are followed; otherwise the cells in use are laid onto as many pages as they need. A sheet wider than its paper carries on across further pages, as it would from a printer, unless the file asks for it to be fitted to the page.

Convert Excel to PDF now — it opens the tool, with nothing to install.

Opened by LibreOffice, not Excel

The workbook is opened by LibreOffice Calc on our own server, and Excel plays no part. Column widths, fonts and charts can come out a little differently. Calibri, Excel's long-time default, is drawn in a font made to its widths, and Aptos, the newer one, in the font on the server nearest its widths; any other font the file names that the server does not have is replaced by another, which can push text over a cell's edge or a column onto the next page. When it could tell that happened, the result says so; either way, the PDF is never called identical to the workbook.

The figures in the cells

An .xlsx workbook shows the results Excel saved, except where a formula changes by itself, with today's date, the time or a random number in it: that cell, and any worked out from it, shows its value at the moment the file is converted, and the record notes such cells. An older .xls workbook has every formula worked out again by LibreOffice, so a figure can differ where LibreOffice works a function out differently from Excel, and the record says how many were; an OpenDocument workbook is worked out again the same way, whichever program saved it. Links to other workbooks are not followed and macros never run; LibreOffice works here with no connection to the internet. A photo placed on a sheet keeps its picture, but what the camera noted beside it, such as where it was taken, is left out of the PDF.

Workbooks with a password

A workbook that needs a password to open is refused before anything is sent to the converter, which cannot take one; nothing here tries to get past it. A sheet that is only protected against editing does not ask for a password to open, and converts like any other.

Big workbooks

A big workbook can take a while. If it is still being laid out when its time is up, the work stops and the page tells you, so you are never left watching a conversion that will not end. One too big for the memory a conversion has is turned away as well, before it is sent when its size shows it, and the message says why.

How much at once

One conversion takes up to 50 files, 32 MB of them in all, and each file up to the size your plan uploads. For more files, convert them in batches and join the PDFs with Merge PDF. The PDF it makes holds no more pages than your plan allows in one document.

The record

The PDF says how it was made, in the record it carries and in your account's trail. For each file it names the kind, the fingerprint, and that LibreOffice laid it out, which version of it did, and whether the layout may differ, and why. The files you send are kept only until the conversion has answered; the PDF is kept with your documents like any other, and deleted after 90 days, or whenever you erase it. What a download costs is on the pricing page.

Other files into PDF

Every kind of file the converter takes, and what the PDF keeps of each, is on Convert to PDF.

And then