Pdf

Aspose.Cells supports conversion of Excel Workbook into PDF. In this example, we will see the complete conversion of an Excel Workbook into PDF.

Converting Excel Workbook to PDF

PDF files are widely used to exchange documents between organizations, government sectors, and individuals. It is a standard document format and software developers are often asked to find a way to convert Microsoft Excel files into PDF documents.

Aspose.Cells supports converting Excel files to PDF and maintains high visual fidelity in the conversion.

Aspose.Cells for .NET directly writes the information about API and Version Number in output documents. For example, upon rendering Document to PDF, Aspose.Cells for .NET populates PDF Producer field with value, e.g ‘Aspose.Cells v23.2’.

Please note that you can change this information in output Documents by PdfSaveOptions.Producer property.

Direct Conversion

Aspose.Cells for .NET supports conversion from spreadsheets to PDF independently of other software. Simply save an Excel file to PDF using the Workbook class' Save method. The Save method provides the SaveFormat.Pdf enumeration member that converts the native Excel files to PDF format.

Follow the below steps to directly convert the Excel spreadsheets to PDF format:

Instantiate an object of the Workbook class by calling its empty constructor.
You may open/load an existing template file or skip this step if you are creating the workbook from scratch.
Do any work (input data, apply formatting, set formulas, insert pictures or other drawing objects, and so on) on the spreadsheet using Aspose.Cells' APIs.
When the spreadsheet code is complete, call the Workbook class' Save method to save the spreadsheet.

The file format should be PDF so select Pdf (a pre-defined value) from the SaveFormat enumeration to generate the final PDF document.

Advanced Conversion

You may also opt to use the PdfSaveOptions class to set different attributes for the conversion. Setting different properties of the PdfSaveOptions class gives you control over the print, font, security and compression settings for the output PDF.

The most important property is Compliance which enables you to set the PDF standards compliance level. Currently, you can save to PDF 1.4, PDF 1.5, PDF 1.6, PDF 1.7, PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-1b, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-2b, PDF/A-2u, PDF/A-3a, PDF/A-2ab, and PDF/A-3u formats. Note that with the PDF/A format, an output file size is larger than a regular PDF file size.

Saving Workbook to PDF/A Complied Files

The below-provided code snippet demonstrates how to use the PdfSaveOptions class to save Excel files to PDF/A compliant PDF format.

Please note, the Compliance property was added with the release of Aspose.Cells for .NET 5.3.0.

Set the PDF Creation Time

With the PdfSaveOptions class, you can get or set the PDF creation time. The following code demonstrates the use of PdfSaveOptions.CreatedTime property to set the creation time of the PDF file.

Set ContentCopyForAccessibility option

With the PdfSaveOptions class, you can get or set the PDF AccessibilityExtractContent option to control the content access in the converted PDF.

Export Custom properties to PDF

With the PdfSaveOptions class, you can export the custom properties in the source workbook to the PDF. PdfCustomPropertiesExport enumerator is provided for specifying the way by which properties are exported. These properties can be observed in Adobe Acrobat Reader by clicking on File and then properties option as shown in the following image. Template file “sourceWithCustProps.xlsx” can be downloaded here for testing and output PDF file “outSourceWithCustProps” is available here for analysis.

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Conversion Attributes

We work to enhance the conversion features with each new release. Aspose.Cell’s Excel to PDF conversion still has a couple of limitations. MapChart is not supported when converting to PDF format. Also, some drawing objects are not supported well.

The table that follows lists all features that are fully or partially supported when exporting to PDF using Aspose.Cells. This table is not final and does not cover all the spreadsheet attributes but it does identify those features that are not supported or partially supported for conversion to PDF.

Document Element	Attribute	Supported	Notes
Alignment		Yes
Background settings		Yes
Border	Color	Yes
Border	Line style	Yes
Border	Line width	Yes
Cell Data		Yes
Comments		Yes
Conditional Formatting		Yes
Document Properties		Yes
Drawing Objects		Partially	Shadow and 3-D effects for drawing objects are not supported well; WordArt and SmartArt are partially supported.
Font	Size	Yes
Font	Color	Yes
Font	Style	Yes
Font	Underline	Yes
Font	Effects	Yes
Images		Yes
Hyperlink		Yes
Charts		Partially	MapChart is not supported.
Merged Cells		Yes
Page Break		Yes
Page Setup	Header/Footer	Yes
Page Setup	Margins	Yes
Page Setup	Page Orientation	Yes
Page Setup	Page Size	Yes
Page Setup	Print Area	Yes
Page Setup	Print Titles	Yes
Page Setup	Scaling	Yes
Row Height/Column Width		Yes
RTL (Right to Left) Language		Yes

If your spreadsheet contains formulas, it is best to call **Workbook.CalculateFormula() just before rendering the spreadsheet to PDF format. Doing so will ensure that the formula dependent values are recalculated, and the correct values are rendered in the PDF.

Advance topics

Convert Excel to CSV,TSV and Txt HTML