Creating a PDF of a multi workbook Excel 2007 spreadsheet

By my own admission, I’m not a big Excel user. I can add a column of numbers and enter data, but not much more than that. However, I was asked if I could create a PDF from an Excel 2007 spreadsheet that contained multiple workbooks. I had no idea if I could or not, so I tested it out and here’s what I found.

Full Acrobat method

If you have the full Acrobat installed (e.g. Acrobat 9 Professional), then you should have an Acrobat tab on the Excel 2007 ribbon.

1. Click the Acrobat tab in Excel 2007.
2. Click Create PDF.
3. Select the Entire Workbook option.
4. Click OK and you’re done!

Of course, you might want to tweak your conversion settings on the Acrobat tab if  the PDF doesn’t come out just as you’d like, but for a basic conversion, this method works well.

Save As PDF method

1. Click the Microsoft Office button  (the pizza orb thingy!) in Excel 2007.
2. Select Save As.
3. Select PDF or XPS.
4. Click the Options button below the File Name field.
5. Select the Entire Workbook option.
6. Click OK to exit all the windows, and the PDF gets created.

Interestingly, the file size of the PDF created from the Acrobat tab (110 KB) was half that created using the Save As method (220 KB). The same spreadsheet was used in both cases.