How to convert Excel files (.xls, .xlsx) to PDFs - A zip with 1 PDF for each line in the Excel document?

written by Răzvan Puiu


Do you need to manually process each line from a spreadsheet?

The latest feature in getPDFapi allows you to convert the whole Excel document at once


Get PDFs from Excel


How it works?

Use the designer to build your template.

You can use the Preveiw PDF button, add some dummy content in the dynamic elements and check if the generated PDF document looks good for you.

Once everything is good in your design, it's time to prepare your spreadsheet:

Make sure that Element Id: is not missing from any element that should be dynamic. (e.g. a cell in your spreadsheet)

Set the id as the header for the column that represents the content of the element in your template as follows:

Optionally you can add another column that contains the name of the generated PDF document. This column need to contain filename as the header

Hit the Get PDFs from Excel button, upload your spreadsheet (.xls, .xlsx are supported), and wait for the generation to be done.

Once the generation is complete, you will be prompted to download a zip file that contains 1 PDF document for each line in your spreadsheet.

  • The columns where the header is not an element id from your design will be ignored
  • The empty rows will be ignored
  • Text elements with no id will be filled with the content placed in the Edit text: field
  • If the filename is not set, a random name will be generated
  • This feature is only available for active accounts.