Excel to PDF | .NET Excel Conversion library

Overview

The Syncfusion .NET Excel (XlsIO) library provides the easiest way for converting Excel documents to PDF in C#/VB.NET with the PDF conformance level PDF/A1B using just a few lines of code. This process is fast, reliable, and supported in hosting environments such as AWS, Google Cloud App, and Microsoft Azure web services.

The Excel to PDF conversion works seamlessly on these platforms: .NET MAUI, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Blazor, Windows Forms, WinUI, WPF, and Xamarin.

Excel to PDF documentation

.NET Excel to PDF

How to convert Excel to PDF in C#

Install Syncfusion.XlsIORenderer.Net.Core NuGet package in your .NET application.
Initialize ExcelEngine and IApplication objects.
Load the Excel document into IWorkbook.
Initialize XlsIORenderer and PdfDocument objects.
Load the IWorkbook instance into ConvertToPDF() method of XlsIORenderer, to convert the Excel document to PDF.
Save the PdfDocument object to a MemoryStream object.

Here is an example of how to convert an Excel document to PDF in C# using the Syncfusion .NET Excel library.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIO renderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert Excel document into PDF document 
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        {  
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Go through more examples of Excel to PDF conversion

Excel to PDF conversion options

An Excel document can be converted to PDF with different Excel to PDF conversion options. Some of those options are explained here.

Layout options

The Excel to PDF conversion can be customized with scaling options such as fitting an entire sheet on one page, fitting all rows or columns on one page, and converting sheets in specified scaling.

The six layout options available and maintained under LayoutOptions enumeration are Automatic, CustomScaling, FitAllColumnsOnOnePage, FitAllRowsOnOnePage, FitSheetOnOnePage and NoScaling.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Set layout option as FitSheetOnOnePage
        settings.LayoutOptions = LayoutOptions.FitSheetOnOnePage;

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Custom paper size

The required paper size of a PDF document can be specified using the CustomPaperSize property.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Set CustomerPaperSize
        settings.CustomPaperSize = new SizeF(10, 20);

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

PDF conformance level

XlsIO allows the users to set the PDF conformance level to PDF/A-1b conformance or PDF/X-1a conformance.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Set the conformance to PDF/A-1b conversion
        settings.PdfConformanceLevel = PdfConformanceLevel.Pdf_A1B;

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Enable form fields

Form fields can be rendered into a PDF document as editable with EnableFormFields property of XlsIORendererSettings.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Export form fields to PDF
        settings.EnableFormFields = true;

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Set image quality

Using the ExportQualityImage property, users can save the high quality TIFF images in PDF document, during Excel to PDF conversion.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Export quality image in PDF
        settings.ExportQualityImage = true;

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Embed fonts

Embed the entire TrueType fonts used in the document and display the document contents uniformly irrespective of whether the font is available or not, during conversion.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORendererSettings
        XlsIORendererSettings settings = new XlsIORendererSettings();

        //Embed fonts in PDF
        settings.EmbedFonts = true;

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

Font substitution

Our built-in SubstituteFont event of IApplication allows users to choose alternate fonts from the device or upload fonts to substitute the specified fonts from the Excel document in Excel to PDF conversion.

c#
using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
    IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
    application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;

    //Initializes the SubstituteFont event to perform font substitution in Excel-to-PDF conversion.
    application.SubstituteFont += new SubstituteFontEventHandler(SubstituteFont);

    using(FileStream excelStream = new FileStream("Sample.xlsx", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(excelStream);

        //Initialize XlsIORenderer
        XlsIORenderer renderer = new XlsIORenderer();

        //Convert the Excel document to PDF with renderer settings
        PdfDocument pdfDocument = renderer.ConvertToPDF(workbook, settings);

        //Save the document into a stream
        using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream()) 
        { 
            pdfDocument.Save(outputStream); 
        }
    }
}

private static void SubstituteFont(object sender, SubstituteFontEventArgs args)
{
    //Substitute a font if the specified font is not installed in the machine.
    if (args.OriginalFontName == "Arial Unicode MS")
    {
        //Substitute by font name.
        args.AlternateFontName = "Arial";
    }
    else if (args.OriginalFontName == "Homizio")
    {
        //Substitute by font stream.
        var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
        var resourceName = "ExceltoPDF.Fonts.Homizio.ttf";
        using(Stream fileStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName))
        {
            using(MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                fileStream.CopyTo(memoryStream);
                args.AlternateFontStream = memoryStream;
            }
        }
    }
}