Charting in excel pdf

How to save Excel graph to PDF

Being in the PDF software business for almost two decades now, we’ve learned a thing or two about potential digital document problems. One of them is a selective conversion: a situation when users would like to extract just a part of the content from the document they’re working on.

With Able2Extract PDF converter, the process of selecting an Area for conversion is dead simple – just click the button and drag around the desired content to make a selection. Then, you can choose between over a dozen of file formats to convert PDF to.

But, what if the problem is the other way around? What if you need to export just a part of the Microsoft Office Excel document to PDF? And more specifically, what if that piece of content is a chart (or charts) surrounded by data, for example?

If you don’t want to export an entire Excel worksheet to PDF, but just a graph or graphs, you’ve come to the right place.

Here’s a time-saver tip when working on a thesis, presentation, or any kind of report involving charts. Read on as we explain, step-by-step, how to extract only charts from MS Excel spreadsheet and save them to a Portable Document Format.

The simplest and straightforward workflow to export Excel chart to PDF is this:

Step 1: Open the Excel file containing the graph you would like to convert.

Example of the Excel chart selected

Step 2: Locate the graph and click on it to make a selection (make sure to click on the white space to select the whole chart and not just an element inside of it). A thick, opaque border should appear outlining chart area.

Save As option in the Excel File menu

Step 3: Go to File > Save As, choose file name and location, and from the Save as type drop-down menu select PDF. Finally, click on the Save button to export the chart to PDF.

Saving chart as PDF

If you followed these steps, you might have noticed that the exported chart is placed on a PDF page that is sized according to whatever the Page size is set to in the Excel Page Layout panel.

Extract Excel Chart to a PDF (Exact Dimensions)

More often than not, users would like to get rid of all that extra white space around the graph. Here’s another method for saving Excel chart to PDF that will result in a PDF sized exactly the same as the chart itself (margin values are applied, so you should set them to zero if you want page edges to follow chart edges as close as possible):

Step 1: Open the Excel file.

Right-click the chart and select Move Chart

Step 2: Locate the graph, right click on it (again, on the white space and not on any particular element of the graph), from the context menu choose Move Chart… and select New sheet option in the dialog. Click OK to confirm.

Move chart to New sheet

Step 3: Go to the newly created tab (by default named Chart1). You’ll notice that the graph is perfectly fitted to the page. Now follow the instructions from Step 3 of the previous guide above to convert Excel chart to PDF without any white space around it.

New chart tab location

Export Multiple Excel Charts to a Single PDF

If you have multiple charts in the Excel document (e.g. 3) and you want to convert them to make a 3-page PDF where every chart is a separate page, follow these instructions after opening the Excel file:

Step 1: For every graph individually repeat Step 2 of the previous guide above. Now you should have Chart1, Chart2, and Chart3 tabs in the Sheet bar.

Selecting multiple chart tabs

Step 2: While pressing Ctrl on your keyboard, select all the chart sheets created previously by left-clicking on them.

Location of the additional Save as options

Step 3: Go to File > Save As, choose PDF, and go to Options. In the dialog under Publish what make sure that Active sheet(s) is selected and not Entire workbook. Type in name for your PDF file, and browse for location before clicking the Save button.

Selecting Active sheets in the Options dialog

If you deal with spreadsheets and tabular data, you’ll certainly appreciate the Custom PDF to Excel feature that lets users custom-tailor their output result before conversion and avoid formatting issues when converting PDF tables to an Excel spreadsheet.

The precision of such conversion capabilities has already helped thousands of users avoid cleaning up the data in Excel afterward. Join us on the path to PDF excellence by downloading Able2Extract Pro trial here and discover how much more productive you can be.

Return to Charts Home

Export Chart as PDF – Excel

Starting with your Data

In this scenario, we’ll show how to export your graph as a PDF in Excel. We’ll start with the below information and want to save the graph as its own graphic.

Starting Data to Export Chart as a PDF in Excel

  1. Click on the graph

Click Graph to Save Chart as PDF in Excel

2. Select File in the top right of the Excel Sheet

Click File on Graph to Export Graph as PDF Excel

3. Select Save As

4. Select This PC

5. Select where you want to save it

6. Name your Graph

7. Change Save as Type to PDF

Save Graph as PDF Chart in Excel

Final Graph as PDF

Once you open it, you can see the final graph saved as a PDF from Excel.

Final Graph as a PDF Chart in Excel

Export Chart as PDF – Google Sheets

Starting with your Data

Below, we’ll start with the same data in Google Sheets that we did in Excel.

Starting Chart to Export Graph Chart in Google Sheets

Export Graph as PDF

  1. Click on Graph
  2. Click on three dots at top right of Graph
  3. Select Download
  4. Select PDF Document (.pdf)

Download Graph as PDF Chart in Google Sheets

5. Open your Downloads to find the PDF

Open Downloads as PDF Chart in Google Sheets

Final Graph as PDF

Below you can see the final PDF with the graph from Google Sheets.

Final Graph as PDF Charts in Google Sheets

We often insert some charts in worksheet to illustrate tables. And in most times, we need to export these charts as JPG or PDF format for some purpose for example insert these charts as pictures into a PowerPoint file or a report. Different with pictures, we cannot save chart as PDF format by ‘Save a picture as’ directly, so we need to find another way to save it. If you have this request, don’t hesitate to read below article. This article will introduce the way to export or save a chart as PDF format conveniently.

Precondition:

Create a table and insert a clustered column chart for it.

How to Export Chart as PDF 1


Step 1: Right click in the blanks in the chart, select Move Chart in the menu.

How to Export Chart as PDF 2

Step 2: After above step, Move Chart dialog pops up. The default option is Object in: Sheet1. We check on New sheet option, and type new sheet name. In this step, we just keep Chart1 as new sheet name. In this step, we want to save this chart into a new sheet. Then click OK.

How to Export Chart as PDF 3

Step 3: You can find that a new worksheet ‘Chart1’ is created. And unlike other normal worksheets, in this sheet only the chart is displayed.

How to Export Chart as PDF 4

Step 4: Click File in ribbon.

How to Export Chart as PDF 5

Then select Sava As.

How to Export Chart as PDF 6

Step 5: You can click This PC or Browse to select save chart location. If you want save it in your computer, select anyone is ok.

How to Export Chart as PDF 7

Step 6: After choosing save PDF file location, enter File name as Chart1, in Save as type dropdown list select PDF. Then click Save.

How to Export Chart as PDF 8

How to Export Chart as PDF 9

Step 7: Enter your selected location, check whether chart1 is exported properly. I save it on desktop.

How to Export Chart as PDF 10

Step 8: Double click to open it.

How to Export Chart as PDF 11

Verify that chart in worksheet is saved as PDF format properly.

Comment:

If there are several charts exist in worksheet, you have to repeat above steps#1-#3 to save them in different sheets. Then hold on Ctrl key on keyboard, click on them one by one manually to select all of them.

How to Export Chart as PDF 12

Then click File->Save As, refer to above steps to save charts as PDF.

How to Export Chart as PDF 13

Please noticed that this time the two charts are saved in one PDF file but separated in different pages.

How to Export Chart as PDF 14

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