Turning a schedule into a PDF
A schedule is evidence, and evidence is served as a fixed document. Converting the spreadsheet gives you something that cannot be re-sorted by accident in someone else’s copy.
Why not just send the spreadsheet
A spreadsheet recalculates: open it on a machine with a different locale, or with a formula edited, and the totals change. A PDF cannot do that. For a schedule of loss, a costs schedule or a Chronology, that immutability is the point — it is the same reason exhibits are served as PDFs.
It also stops the recipient seeing the working, the hidden columns and the tabs you forgot were there.
How the layout behaves
Each sheet becomes its own section, headed by the sheet name. Wide sheets are set in landscape automatically; narrow ones stay portrait. Cells are drawn as a ruled table at a fixed column width rather than reproducing Excel’s formatting — so bold headings and fills from the original are not carried over.
Formulas are rendered as their last calculated value, which is what you want, but only if the workbook was saved by Excel with cached values. A file produced by a script that never calculated will show blanks.
Check the numbers, not the styling
Open the PDF and check the total row against the spreadsheet before serving it. Layout differences are cosmetic; a column that overflowed its width and clipped a figure is not. If a column is too narrow, move it to its own sheet or shorten the heading.
Does it keep the formulas?+
No. The output is a PDF of values — the formulas stay in the spreadsheet, which is the point.
Can I choose which sheets to include?+
Not yet: every sheet with content is included. Delete the sheets you do not want in a copy of the workbook first.
What about very wide schedules?+
They are set in landscape, but a sheet with thirty columns will still be tight. Splitting it into two sheets reads better than shrinking the text.
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