5

I am trying to print multiple sheets from the same Excel workbook into ONE PDF file. But it frequently prints them separately or only the first sheet.

I selected all the sheets and made them have the same page setup. I am working on Tiger and from the Print dialogue, I click on the left-hand bottom button, "Save PDF" and from there I choose "Save PDF-X".

Anyone have another solution for me?

Excellll
  • 12,627
  • 11
  • 51
  • 78
Anriëtte Myburgh
  • 512
  • 2
  • 8
  • 18
  • 1
    For those using Excel on Windows: on a Mac, the print dialog always has an option to save as PDF as well. As such, I guess it doesn't really matter that the question asker needs PDF; the question could probably also read **"How to print multiple Excel sheets in one go?"**, regardless whether it is really printed on paper, or "printed" to another format. – Arjan Jan 25 '10 at 15:38

7 Answers7

2

Select Multiple sheets using Ctrl and then print using pdf writer to get one single file vijay

Vijay
  • 21
  • 2
1

Just print the excel sheets into separate PDF files and join them using Adobe Acrobat Professional, if you have it. If not, don't sweat it: there's the brilliant open source PDF toolkit. Here's a short tutorial explaining how combine multiple PDFs.

It's very simple:

pdftk sheet1.pdf sheet2.pdf cat output sheets_all.pdf

Note that you can use wildcards and that the order of input determines the page ordering.

Paul Lammertsma
  • 4,106
  • 7
  • 32
  • 41
  • Thank you, this is very helpful, but I am actually looking for a more permanent solution/fix. I print quotes to PDF everyday and need this to work better. – Anriëtte Myburgh Jan 25 '10 at 12:44
  • All I can really think of is making a fairly generic batch file using wildcards. The other extreme is writing a PHP/PEAR based exporter: there are well-established packages for reading XLS files and writing PDF files, but that would be seriously overkill. – Paul Lammertsma Jan 25 '10 at 14:58
  • Indeed, it's not the solution. But for the archives: for joining PDF documents one can easily use Preview as well. Just open one PDF document, make Preview show its sidebar, and then drag another **on top of** the existing thumbnail in the sidebar. (Ensure not to drag it *below* or *above* the existing thumbnail in the sidebar; you really must drag it on top of the existing thumbnail.) After dropping it, the thumbnail will become a comb bound booklet, which can be expanded or collapsed into a single thumbnail in the sidebar as well. Expand it and drag the thumbnails to reorder if needed. – Arjan Jan 25 '10 at 15:33
  • @Arjan Thanks, I tried that, but it is specific to Preview on Leopard or later and I was using Preview on Tiger. – Anriëtte Myburgh Apr 12 '10 at 13:53
  • There might be an Apple Script solution out there that combines printing from Excel and PDF toolkit into a single click of a button, but I'm not familiar enough with Apple Script. Perhaps shoot a question on Stack Overflow and somebody can give you something that you can simply plug. – Paul Lammertsma Apr 13 '10 at 00:22
1

I tried multiple times to give the two separate sheets the same page margins and page properties, but it didn't help me one bit.

I fixed this with an Automator task that took me quite a while to work out, but once it worked, it helped me a lot.

Thanks for all the answers, though I really did specify in my question that I did do all the suggested solutions before posting.

random
  • 14,638
  • 9
  • 54
  • 58
Anriëtte Myburgh
  • 512
  • 2
  • 8
  • 18
  • Actually, this seems about as good as Automator. Does it just bring up all the PDFs, or actually combine them? I'm curious how it worked out. – Paul Lammertsma Apr 13 '10 at 00:25
  • What happened was the quotes always contained 2 pages, the first one being always the same. So I just printed the second one as PDF to the Desktop. Selected both on the Desktop and right clicked -> Folder Actions -> Combiine PDFs (my custom task). It takes the files and sorts them alphabetically (declining in my case) and then combines the PDF's and saves it to a new file on the Desktop. – Anriëtte Myburgh Apr 13 '10 at 05:53
  • Good you found a solution. Please share the main details about that Automator task then? – Arjan Apr 17 '10 at 09:41
  • The whole of the Automator task is described in the comment just above your's. – Anriëtte Myburgh Apr 19 '10 at 05:55
1

Select the sheets you want in your pdf file (make sure you print preview / set print areas in each sheet that you want to print) and "save as" pdf. Makes a pdf file with all selected worksheets.

Catnz
  • 11
  • 1
0

As Paul suggested, you could join them together after printing, f.e. also using pdfsam. As an alternative you can use PDFCreator which does support to create a query of documents and join them together.

Bobby
  • 8,944
  • 3
  • 37
  • 45
0

Is there any kind of "options" button in the Save As dialogue? On Excel 2007 / Windows the Save As pdf dialogue has an options button which then allows you to save only the selection, the active sheet, the selected sheets, the whole workbook etc. I have no idea if this is available on your version of Office for Mac.

AdamV
  • 6,177
  • 2
  • 22
  • 38
0

When saving the doc, selection option and all workbook instead of active sheet

  • Select and Drag all the PDFs into preview.
  • Select all in sidebar.
  • Print and Save As PDF.
Sathyajith Bhat
  • 61,504
  • 38
  • 179
  • 264