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 of the way Microsoft Excel sends the print job. Excel assumes that all your individual sheets have different page setups, so it sends them as multiple print-jobs.

n order to have all the individual sheets printed within a single PDF file (not multiple PDFs) you need to set the same page setup options for all of them (page setup in Excel modifies the print size of the resulting file, so for example if you set the page layout to landscape in Excel, the printed page will be landscape but your original Excel file will still maintain the same view). 

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. Go to File->Page Setup, select the options you want for the resulting printed pages (it's important that the Print Quality is the same for all pages) 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. Go to File->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 go to File->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.

Applies to:

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

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!

THANK you so much for this info! Couldn't figure out what happened to my workbook... someone had changed the dpi.