Convert Google Sheets to PDF

The export dialog, option by option

Everything that decides how the PDF looks is in the page that opens after File, Download, PDF. There is no separate page setup in Sheets, so this dialog is the answer to "save Google Sheets as PDF" and to every layout complaint about the result.

• Export. Current sheet, Workbook or Selected cells. Selected cells only appears when a range was highlighted first.
• Paper size and orientation. Letter or A4, portrait or landscape. A table wider than eight columns nearly always wants landscape.
• Scale. Normal, Fit to width, Fit to height, Fit to page, or a custom percentage. Fit to width is the usual fix for a table cut across pages.
• Margins. Normal, Narrow or Wide. Narrow gains about a column on a wide table.
• Formatting. Show gridlines, show notes, page order, and horizontal or vertical alignment.
• Headers and footers. Page numbers, workbook title, sheet name, current date and time. Repeat frozen rows and columns puts the frozen header on every page.

The PDF has real text, so a reader can select and search it. Charts are drawn as vector shapes. Images in cells come through as images. Formulas are gone, in the sense that only the values print.

Google Sheets to PDF on one page

Choose Fit to page under Scale. Sheets shrinks the sheet until both its width and height fit one sheet of paper, which is right for a small summary table. For a long table, Fit to page makes the type unreadable; use Fit to width instead, tick Repeat frozen rows so the header appears on every page, and let the rows run down as many pages as they need.

Two other tricks help. Hide the columns you do not need before exporting, because hidden columns are not printed. And highlight only the range you want, then choose Selected cells, so a sheet with notes off to the side does not add pages.

Exporting from the Sheets app on a phone

Open the spreadsheet, tap the More button (three dots) at the top right, tap Share and export, then Send a copy, then PDF. The phone app has fewer layout options than the browser, so a wide table is better exported from a computer, or from the browser on the phone with Request desktop site switched on. For a quick copy of a small sheet, the app route is enough.

A downloaded .xlsx works here too

If a workbook is already on your machine as a .xlsx, whether it came from Sheets through File, Download, Microsoft Excel or from Excel itself, Excel to PDF converts it in the browser tab, one file at a time, and proves the cell text reached the PDF before the download. It follows the page setup stored in the workbook, so the scale-to-fit rules in Fit an Excel sheet on one PDF page apply. This is the route when you export Google Sheets to PDF for many workbooks at once and want the same treatment for each.

Getting the PDF under a size limit

A Sheets export is small unless the sheet holds images or a long run of charts. When a portal asks for 1 MB or 2 MB and the file is over it, drop it on Compress PDF, type the limit as the target, and the tool tries more than one method and keeps the smallest result that still opens. It reads the compressed file back before the download, so the pages and the cell text are confirmed. Text and vector charts are already compact; images are what shrinks.

The reverse direction, getting a PDF table back into a spreadsheet, is in Convert a PDF to Google Sheets. A Slides deck exports through a near-identical dialog, covered in Convert Google Slides to PDF. The rest of the Office guides are under PDF, Word and Excel help.