How to Export Chart from Excel to PDF

Getting your well-crafted Excel chart into a clean, presentable PDF is a fundamental skill for anyone creating reports or presentations. A PDF ensures your formatting stays locked in place, making your data look professional and easy to share with anyone, on any device. This guide will walk you through several methods for exporting your Excel charts to PDF, from the quick and simple to more advanced techniques for handling multiple charts at once.

Why Bother Exporting Excel Charts to PDF?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." While sending a raw Excel file might seem easier, exporting to PDF has some clear advantages:

• Universal Compatibility: A PDF looks the same everywhere. You don't have to worry about your colleague having a different version of Excel or a missing font that messes up your beautiful chart layout.

• Professionalism: Sending a polished PDF feels more like a finished report than sending a spreadsheet full of raw data and pivot tables. It focuses the viewer's attention directly on the insight the chart provides.

• File Size: A PDF containing just a chart is often smaller and easier to email than a full Excel workbook with multiple tabs and complex formulas.

• Security: PDFs add a layer of separation from your raw data. It prevents recipients from accidentally altering your chart's data source or snooping around other parts of your spreadsheet.

Method 1: The Quickest Way - "Print to PDF"

For exporting a single chart, the fastest and most direct method is using the built-in "Print to PDF" function. It might sound strange to "print" a digital file, but think of it as creating a digital snapshot. This is the go-to method for speed and simplicity.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Select Your Chart: The first and most important step is to click once on the chart you want to export. This tells Excel that the chart is the only thing you're interested in printing. You'll know it's selected when you see a border appear around it.

2. Open the Print Menu: You can do this in two ways:

   • Go to File in the top menu and select Print.

   • Use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + P (on Windows) or Cmd + P (on Mac).

3. Choose the "PDF Printer": In the Print menu, click the dropdown under "Printer." Instead of your physical office printer, select an option like Microsoft Print to PDF on Windows or Save as PDF in the bottom-left corner on a Mac. This directs the output to a new file instead of a piece of paper.

4. Isolate the Chart: Under the "Settings" section, you'll see a dropdown menu that likely defaults to "Print Active Sheets." Click this and change it to Print Selected Chart. The print preview on the right should immediately update to show only your chart, perfectly centered on the page. This is the magic step that prevents Excel from exporting the entire spreadsheet.

5. Adjust Orientation and Margins (Optional): Your chart might look better in a different orientation.

   • Use the "Page Orientation" dropdown to switch between Portrait and Landscape. Landscape is often better for bar charts or line charts with long time axes.

   • You can also adjust the margins to give your chart more or less white space around the edges. Usually, the default "Normal Margins" work well.

6. "Print" and Save: Click the "Print" button. A "Save Print Output As" window will pop up, prompting you to choose a location and file name for your new PDF. Name your file, click "Save," and you're done!

This whole process takes less than 30 seconds once you've done it a few times and is perfect for sending a quick visualization via email or Slack.

Method 2: Better Control and Options with "Save As"

Sometimes you need more control over the final PDF output. The "Save As" method offers a few extra options that can be useful, especially when it comes to file quality and preparing documents for professional printing.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Select the Chart: Just like the previous method, start by clicking on your chart to select it.

2. Navigate to Save As: Click on File > Save As (or Save a Copy in newer versions). Browse to the folder where you want to save your PDF.

3. Change the File Type: Below the file name field, you'll see a "Save as type" dropdown. Click it and select PDF (*.pdf) from the list.

4. Access PDF Options: Before you hit save, notice the "Options..." button that appears next to the "Optimize for" settings. Click it to open the PDF options menu. This is where the extended control comes from.

5. Configure the Output: In the Options pop-up window, under the "Publish what" section, select the radio button for Selected chart(s).

   You can also configure other settings here:

   • Page range: Not relevant when exporting a single chart.

   • Document properties: Useful if you want to include metadata like author or title in the PDF file itself.

   • PDF options: You can choose options like "ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A)" for long-term archiving standards.

6. Optimize for Quality: Back in the main "Save As" window, you have two optimization choices:

   • Standard (publishing online and printing): This is the default and best choice for most situations. It creates a higher-quality PDF.

   • Minimum size (publishing online): Choose this if your top priority is the smallest possible file size, but be aware that it may slightly reduce the visual quality of the chart.

7. Save the PDF: Once you've configured your settings, click "OK" on the Options window, then "Save" in the main dialog box.

How to Export Multiple Charts to a Single PDF

What if you have a dashboard with three, four, or even ten charts that you want to export together into a single report? Exporting them one by one is tedious. Here are the best ways to tackle this common scenario.

Method A: The "Dashboard Sheet" Technique (Recommended)

This is by far the most reliable and professional way to export multiple charts. It gives you full control over the layout and ensures your final PDF looks exactly how you want it to.

1. Create a New Worksheet: Add a new, blank worksheet to your Excel workbook. You can rename it something descriptive like "Dashboard," "Report," or "PDF Export."

2. Move Your Charts: Go to each chart you want in your report. Right-click on the chart's border and select Move Chart...

3. Consolidate the Charts: In the "Move Chart" pop-up, choose the "Object in" option and select your newly created "Dashboard" sheet from the dropdown menu. Click OK. The chart will disappear from its original location and reappear on your dashboard sheet. Repeat this process for all the charts you want to include.

4. Arrange Your Dashboard: Now go to your "Dashboard" sheet. All your charts are there, probably overlapping. Click and drag them to arrange them exactly as you want them to appear in the PDF. Resize them, align them, and add titles using Text Boxes (Insert > Text Box) if needed to create a clean-looking report.

5. Switch to Page Break Preview: To see exactly where the page breaks will fall, go to the View tab and click Page Break Preview. Excel will show you blue dotted lines indicating the edges of each page. You can drag these blue lines to adjust the page breaks and ensure your charts aren't awkwardly split in half.

6. Export the Sheet: With your dashboard sheet active, use either the "Print to PDF" or "Save As" method described earlier. The key difference is that in the Settings, you'll choose Print Active Sheets instead of "Print Selected Chart." This will convert your neatly arranged dashboard into a multi-page PDF.

Method B: The CTRL + Click Method (Quick but Unpredictable)

If you need a very fast way to get multiple charts into a PDF and don't care much about the layout, you can use this shortcut.

1. Select Multiple Charts: Hold down the CTRL key (or Cmd on Mac) and click on each chart you want to include. You'll see borders appear around each selected chart.

2. Use "Print to PDF": With all charts selected, press Ctrl + P.

3. Choose "Print Selected Chart": Under Settings, the option will still read "Print Selected Chart," but since you have multiple charts selected, Excel will put each one on a separate page in the final PDF.

The main drawback of this method is that you have zero control over how Excel places the charts, it essentially puts one chart per page. The "Dashboard Sheet" method is always better for creating a professional, cohesive report.

Final Thoughts

Exporting charts from Excel to PDF transforms your raw analysis into a shareable, professional document. Whether you use the quick "Print to PDF" function for a single chart or set up a dedicated dashboard sheet for a multi-page report, mastering these techniques removes friction from your reporting process.

Ultimately, these export methods are workarounds for a larger challenge: getting insights out of your tools and into the hands of stakeholders. Manually creating and exporting reports from spreadsheets can take hours out of your week. At Graphed, we automate this process by letting you connect your data sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, or your CRM - and build dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. Your charts are always live, update in real-time, and can be shared with a simple link, eliminating the need for constant exporting and emailing PDFs back and forth.