Convert XLSX to PDF

The task of converting an XLSX file to PDF is quite simple since most of the office softwares have this function, to a large extent, like printing to PDF; In other words, just formatting the spreadsheet and printing it as a PDF is enough.

In fact, LibreOffice Calc has a default button to do the conversion. If not, just by pressing CTRL + P, a dialog box will open to choose the printer, which in this case you must choose 'Print to a file', and then choose 'PDF Format'.

On the other hand, many of the XLSX online viewers are actually converters to PDF and give you the option of downloading the file they generate..

In any case, we are going to understand what these two formats are about, their similarities and their differences, and then see how we can convert an XLSX file to PDF.

XLSX files are Microsoft Excel text files that are evolutionary from XLS. With the release of the 2007 version of Excel, the format was introduced as a new standard for spreadsheet documents. The goal was to establish an XML-based file format that required less storage capacity. The name XLSX is a combination of the popular XLS extension and the X for XML. This format contains a set of packages in XML, being more practical to archive, since it can be decompressed with external software to Office Suite and allows easy sending via email. The XLSX file belongs to the Office Open XML standard (also called OOXML or OpenXML), being an open file format. This type of file improves file and data management and expands the possibilities with binary files compared to previous versions of Microsoft Excel. Storing information in XML format represents an increase in security, which is essentially plain text.

PDF is a file format initially developed by Acrobat and later acquired by Adobe Systems to represent documents regardless of their original operating system, application or hardware where it was created, making a document portable, as its name implies. A PDF file can be of any size, contain any number of fonts and images, and is designed to allow transfer to any computer and printing of the document without any modifications. Each PDF file contains a complete description of a 2D and 3D document that includes 2D / 3D text, fonts, images, and vector graphics that make up the document. They do not have information or specification of the software to open or create it which makes it an open format.

The main WEB services that offer online conversion are the following:

The steps will be exactly the same: