We have to convert a lot of Microsoft Excel sheets to PDF format.  Unfortunately, multi-column sheets (for example, 5 columns of contact information: names, addresses, email addresses) take up a lot of real estate, so Adobe PDF usually breaks the sheet into 2 or more pages of columns.   One easy way around this is to enable WORD WRAP in Excel, then resize the columns; use Print Preview to remove any borders/padding, and you can get most things to fit across one page.

Here is how to enable Word Wrap in Excel (2003 and 2007 version):

• Hold Control and then click on the top column header (usually has a letter next to it) for each column with content.  You want to get all of your columns (with data in them) highlighted.
• Press CONTROL and the 1 key;  this will open up the FORMAT CELLS menu box.
• Choose the ALIGNMENT tab, and then put a check next to WRAP TEXT.  Press OK.  Here is what the menu should look like:
  

  Choose Wrap Text from the MS Excel FORMAT CELLS menu.

  Don’t forget to use the PRINT PREVIEW (FILE>PRINT>PRINT PREVIEW) to take a peak at your sheet before printing.  You might have to edit  the margins to get everything to fit as needed.  (Put a check next to SHOW MARGINS at the top menu).

  You should now be ready to print to PDF!

Thantos Office 2007

Microsoft Excel is a great program, especially when you are created delimited files to import into MySQL databases. However, when you have commas within data columns, using commas as the delimiter will ruin your day. A better approach is to use semi-colons as the delimiter…But Excel does not give you this option. So, the easiest approach is to make this change in the Windows settings.

To do so:

1. Go to START>SETTINGS>REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS
2. Click on the CUSTOMIZE button
3. Next to LIST SEPARATOR, type in a semi-colon (;)

This will set the default delimiter value to a semi-colon.  So, when you save a file in Excel as .csv, you will have semi-colons to separate the row data.

Note: I used Windows XP for the above settings.   A different flavor of Windows might have different options.

Thantos Office 2007