Printing an entire Excel workbook to a single PDF file

If you have multiple individual sheets within your Excel workbook, when you try to create a PDF and choose to print the Entire Workbook, each sheet will be saved as a different PDF file. This happens because one (or multiple) sheets in your workbook has a different dpi setting for printing. Because of this, Excel assumes that each individual sheet has to be sent for printing separately, so it will send it in the same way to the PDF printer which will prompt to create a PDF from each sheet.

In order to have all the individual sheets printed within a single PDF file (not multiple PDFs) you need to set the same DPI printing value for all of them. 

In order to set the DPI value for each individual page, you have to follow these steps:

1. Open the Excel workbook
2. Select the sheet you want to set the DPI for
3. In Microsoft Excel 2007 go to Page Layout and click on the expand button for the Page Setup dialog (for Microsoft Excel 2003 or earlier go to File->Page Setup)
4. In the Print Quality section enter the DPI value that you want to have for your document (note that this is the DPI value you will have to set for each individual sheet too) and press OK
5. novaPDF will ask you where to save the PDF and (if set so) it will open the PDF when it's created. You will have to repeat these steps for each individual sheet in your workbook.

The above method is recommended when you have different printing settings for each page (for instance if you have a Header/Footer set for each page). However, if you have the same printing settings for each sheet in the workbook, you can change the Page Setup options for all sheets at once. Please note that by using this method you will have the same settings for all sheets, including the header/footer. To set the same Page Setup options for all individual Excel sheets:

1. Open the Excel workbook
2. Right-click the tab for any of the sheets you have in your workspace (by default they sheet tabs are named Sheet1, Sheet2, ...)
3. Choose the Select all Sheets option (which will select all the sheets in your workspace, you can tell they're selected if all the sheet tabs have a white background like an active sheet tab would have)
4. In Microsoft Excel 2007 go to Page Layout and click on the expand button for the Page Setup dialog (for Microsoft Excel 2003 or earlier go to File->Page Setup). Set the Print Quality to the DPI value you want and press OK so that Excel will record the fact that all pages have the same print settings. It's important to press the OK button even if you don't change anything, because this will "tell" Excel that all the sheets have the same page setup options.
5. Click on the Office button then Print->Print Preview and see if you like the way the pages will show when printed to PDF. If you don't have any changes to the printing options click on the Office button and then on Print, select the Entire Workbook option under Print What and novaPDF from the Printer name section and click OK to create the PDF file
6. novaPDF will ask you where to save the PDF and (if set so) it will open the PDF when it's created.

Starting with version 6, novaPDF now includes a PDF merging (combining) option, so another way to have multiple individual Excel sheets printed to a single PDF would be to use novaPDF's own merge option. This will let you print the first sheet to a PDF document and after that print all the other sheets in that workbook to the same pdf. You can read more about the PDF merging option here: Merge PDF files with novaPDF

Applies to:

• novaPDF (all editions)
• Microsoft Excel 2007
• Microsoft Excel 2003
• Microsoft Excel 2002
• Microsoft Excel 2000

Thank you so much. Have been trying to fix this problem, periodically, for several years.

Farzad, in your case another solution is to use the merging option that novaPDF has, please see this article for details - http://www.novapdf.com/kb/merge-pdf-files-with-novapdf-146.html

thankx

now i can print entire excel sheet in 1 file pdf.

when the first time i tried, i click ok after page setup like you said, but entire sheet have same page option and my page totally change when i click print preview.
and i try to change print resolution for each sheet to 600, and succeed.
thx

Great set of instructions. Thanks.
My issue is that I need to have a different header for each sheet. And when the print setup is made common to all the sheets in order to produce a single pdf file all the sheets will have the same header. Any solution for that one?

Thanks again.

Excellent - your guide worked for me too. Thank you.

Hi, I find this works only if the total number of pages to be printed to the PDF is 9 or less. The 10th page an onwards get cutoff and not included in the pdf. Has anyone else seen this problem?

This is very helpful. I couldn't figure out why only 2 of 4 sheets printed to the PDF. Turns out the print quality wasn't set on the last two sheets. Set them, but didn't have to do the Page setup or set print area.

@Alan Thebert - Yes you can print multiple single Word documents to a single pdf file with novaPDF using its PDF merge function. See the tutorial here - http://www.novapdf.com/kb/merge-pdf-files-with-novapdf-146.html

How to do a similar single PDF document from multiple single MSWord page files? Primopdf will let me append pages 1 - 9, but "conversion fails 18" on page 10. Can NOVAPDF append pages, and if so, how to do it, please?

works for me too... doPdf
thank you

Crackin!! Great job :O)

Thanks. You really helped me a lot !

Thanks. I was trying to figure out why Excel was sending two jobs, and this was it.

You are marvelous! So simple an answer but yet so elusive for those of us not in the know.

I use another PDF printer and I still found this advice to be fantastic!! You are a legend.

Excellent information. I was so frustrated that I pulled out my hair, but I thank you for saving my life!

This is awesome, thanks!

Thankyou very much...

you saved me! MWAH!!

Thank you.

I was having this problem when printing to pdf and as a standard print job from Excel.

Your solution has fixed this for me and saved a load of time trying to figure it out!