Diagram with Multiple Shapes

To create a PDF document for a diagram with multiple shapes, simply select the range of cells behind the shapes and then choose the "Selected range or chart" option when creating the PDF file.

Select a range of cells for a diagram

Text Boxes and Truncated Text

If you use text boxes, sometimes you find the text is truncated, i.e., on the PDF version, some texts are missing, whereas the Excel sheet shows them perfectly. This is because different apps, like the printer driver and Excel itself, display text slightly differently.

To deal with this, simply enlarge the text box to give it more redundancy. There are also several text box properties you can use here. First select one or more text boxes, then right-click one of the selected boxes and choose "Size and Properties" to show the "Format Shape" pane. Expand the "Text Box" section.

Format Shape Pane

It is recommended to enable the "Allow text to overflow shape" option. When this is selected. Excel won’t resize the shape (the text box) when generating PDFs, and the text is likely not to overflow the shape if it shows correctly in Excel. In the flowchart PDF sample, all text boxes have this option enabled.

The "Resize shape to fit text" option is useful too. But if your diagram uses connectors, like what our Flowchart Maker does, it is not a good idea to let Excel resize the shapes when creating PDFs, because resizing the shapes automatically breaks the connections.

Printer Drivers

PDF Maker for Excel relies on two virtual printers: "Microsoft Print to PDF" and "Microsoft XPS Document Writer". These are two optional features installed by default with Windows. If you encounter any problems with these two printers, simply reinstall them. To do this, click the "Settings" button on the "UniformSoftware" (or "BoostExcel") ribbon tab, and then click the "Install / Reinstall Printer Drivers" button.

Settings window

You can also install the drivers manually. To do this, open the Windows control panel, click "Programs", and then click "Turn Windows features on or off". Scroll down the list of Windows features and install or uninstall the printer drivers by checking or unchecking the corresponding options.

Windows Features dialog box