June 15, 2004

10:38 AM

Mostly an Excel question (though maybe crossover to PDF).
posted by dobbs to (4 comments total)

A client has sent me an excel file to convert to a PDF. I am a total newbie in excel. The file has more columns than will fit on a page. When I convert it to a PDF, it goes through all the columns (say, 1-10) that will fit on one page, for all the pages (10 pages) and then the next 10 pages have colums 10-20 on it.

However, is there a way to get the row name from the first column to be the first row on all of the pages? Right now pages 10-20 don't have a row name attached.

Is this making sense? :)
posted by dobbs at 10:38 AM on June 15, 2004

Here's a really messy attempt at explaining this better.

The excel file looks like this:

                      one         two     three     four   five    six

jane               y               n          n            y       n       y

tony               y               n           y            n       n       n

etc...

But when I PDF it, only the first 3 columns will fit on a page. So I get two pages which look like this:

1

                      one         two     three  

jane               y               n          n          

tony               y               n           y        

etc...



2



four   five    six

y       n       y

n       n       n

etc...

What I want is for page 2 to have the column with the people's names in it to appear before the other columns, like this:

                      four   five    six

jane               y       n       y

tony               n       n       n

etc...

Any help appreciated, thanks!
posted by dobbs at 11:00 AM on June 15, 2004

Are you using Acrobat?

If so, I just confirmed that this will work:

Under File, pick "Page Setup"
Pick the "Sheet" tab on the dialog box.
Find the "Columns to repeat at left" box.
Either select your range, or type it in the box:
$A:$A means just the first column
$A:$B means use the first two columns as labels, and so on.
(You can do your title rows on the same page incidently)

Now, make the PDF using the fake printer:
File->Print, then pick "Adobe PDF" as the printer name.
Hit OK, give it a file name and you're done.
posted by bonehead at 11:07 AM on June 15, 2004

Woohoo! Thanks, bonehead. Worked like a charm.
posted by dobbs at 11:12 AM on June 15, 2004