I am using Excel for Mac 2011 and want to select multiple tabs and have this print to one pdf file. I can print to a normal printer, and have done this for years on a PC, but the Mac pdf function seperates it into seperate files. I am happy to buy an aftermarket soeftware program for a reasonable price.
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)
Try the following:
1. Select the sheets you want to print by clicking "command" key
2. Click "File" then "Print"
3. Under "Print What:" choose "Selection" or "Entire Workbook"
4. Click PDF
5. Save as PDF...
This should save the selected sheets into one sigle PDF document.
i would not have posted this without extensive experience, please don't feel slighted. There are a number of posts about this on other blogs and i am hoping this network might help me solve it.
I did make one error in my description, as it is true that sigle page documents under seperate tabs will sometimes combine into a single pdf...but not always in my experience.
I am absolutely certain that multiple page documents under seperate tabs will not combine. I will also crarify that while all tabs are portrait, they do not have the same fomatting and # of columns.
Finally, this absolutely does work in Excel 2010 for PC when writing to a pdf writer, the problem seems to be Mac based. My sense is I need to buy a 3rd party pdf writer that truly acts like a printer with its own drivers, does anyone make this?
Well, there's Acrobat.
Other than that, I would suggest looking at MacUpdate, or possibly the Mac App Store.
Office has a history of bad printing when portrait and landscape are mixed (as I think you were alluding to). Given that, it wouldn't suprise me that you get a split PDF out of Office if the format is different. I know we've run into problems similar to that with Office 2007, at work (not PDFs, just mixed format).
Regardless, you can just open all the documents in Preview, Show all the pages of the first document, then drag the remaining ones into the first one. I think all the page numbers (in the Preview numbering system) get wonky, but you can just print the merged document to PDF and get the numbering straight.
MacNewbeee -
Were you ever able to find a solution to this printing problem. I've been using Excel on both Mac and Windows for ages, and am having the same issue trying to print to a single PDF file. Would appreciate an update if you were able to find a solution.
All the page setup information has to be the same; margins, orientation, scale, header and footer information. If there's any differences, Excel will seperate the tabs into seperate .pdf documents. The easiest way to fix this is to select all tabs and format the page setup all at once. Obviously you'd want to go back and check each tab to make sure it's formatted the way you want.
I tried this method and had the same results. Select all sheets, go to page set up, save changes. Confirmed all sheets were the same and when I went to save as pdf and got the individual files for each sheet, again.
I found the answer by Eric Root to be the most helpful. Each tab was created as a separate PDF file, but they were numbered as though they were created as 3 tabs to one PDF file. Afterwards, I used "FIle | Create | Combine Files Into Single PDF ..." to obtain the single PDF I wanted.
I have same problem. Need to print all tabs in excel with different page set ups to a single pdf. Wasted half of morning trying to sort this out on my Mac. Just got my old windows xp machine out c/w office 2000 and sorted it in seconds. Can this be done on the Mac as this is a regular requirement for me and cannot afford to waste time rebuilding the pdf's manually all the time?
eastwoodac wrote:
Can this be done on the Mac as this is a regular requirement for me and cannot afford to waste time rebuilding the pdf's manually all the time?
Well it seems Microsoft "fixed" this problem in Office 2016 by converting all the pages to the page layout of the active tab when you print or save as PDF.
Yes I do believe this is a Microsoft downgrade between Excel 2000 & Excel 2013. Just tried on Excel 2013 under Windows 7 and it splits the pdf's to separate pages like it did on the Mac. Sorry Apple it was Microsoft's fault. Will continue to use office 2000 as the ribbon is simply no use to productivity at all either.
The good old days when things used to work.
Questions specific to MS Office products are better asked in the Office for Mac forums. Only some people here use Office, while everyone there does.
Select one end of the tabs, then Shift-click the other to select all the tabs, then print.
You can also cmd-click on the tabs to individually select and deselect.
this would seem to be the obvioius solutiuon as it has worked on the PC version since at least 1997, but not on a Mac. It will create a seperate pdf of each and every tab.
Sorry. Just did it to check it out before posting. It created a single PDF.
Odd you would assume I just posted garbage without verifying what I posted.
I will add one more clue: before it worked after did not!
Unfortunately I do not know what and when changed...
Hopefully someone finds a solution!
How do I print multiple tabs in excel to one pdf
