Documentation / Views & output / Exporting & printing

Exporting & printing

Sooner or later somebody who doesn’t have Gantt Excel needs to see your plan. This page covers the two ways out — a PDF snapshot and a standalone XLSX workbook — what each one keeps, what each one loses, and how to get a printout that isn’t twelve pages of nothing.

Both exports live in their own section of the ribbon: Gantt Excel → Export. There is no “Print” button of Gantt Excel’s own — printing is Excel’s own Ctrl+P, and the PDF export uses exactly the same page setup, which is why the two are documented together here.

01 Which export do you want?

They answer different questions. A PDF is a picture of the chart as it looks right now; an XLSX is the chart itself, lifted out into an ordinary workbook.

EXPORT TO PDF

“Can you send me something I can look at?”

Writes the active chart sheet to a .pdf — one file, no formulas, nothing to click. Exactly what your printer would produce, so it is also the way to check a printout before you commit paper to it.

It exports the sheet you are standing on and nothing else. Other charts in the workbook are not included.

EXPORT TO XLSX

“Can you send me the plan so I can dig into it?”

Copies the chart into a brand-new, ordinary .xlsx workbook that opens on any copy of Excel, with or without Gantt Excel installed. The grid, the bars, the colours and the resources all travel.

What does not travel is the software. The copy has no macros, so nothing in it recalculates — see section 04.

The full Gantt Excel ribbon tab, with the Export section holding Export to PDF and Export to XLSX second from the right. — Hover or tap a numbered pin. The two Export buttons sit in their own section towards the right-hand end of the tab, just before the section holding **About**.

Those are the four buttons this page keeps sending you back to, so here they are at full size. Show Full Timeline is a split button: clicking its face fits the whole project, while the small arrow beside it opens a Scroll To menu holding the other three.

Show Full Timeline resizes the window; the three Scroll To items move it without changing its width. Both matter before you export, because the export can only save the dates the window is currently showing.

02 Exporting to PDF

Stand on the chart you want, then Gantt Excel → Export → Export to PDF.

Gantt Excel builds a default file name from the sheet name and the moment you clicked — a sheet called Kitchen Refit becomes KitchenRefit_20260811_143001.pdf. Spaces are removed and full stops become underscores, so the name is always safe to save.

On Windows a Save dialog opens at the workbook’s own folder, titled Select where to save the file. Change the name or the folder if you like, then save. On Mac you are asked only to choose a folder — the file name above is used as-is.

The sheet is written to PDF and you are told PDF file has been created, followed by Do you want to open the file? under the heading Export Complete. Answer Yes and the PDF opens in whatever your machine uses for PDFs.

If Excel refuses to write the file — a folder you can’t write to, or the same PDF already open in a reader — you get Could not create PDF file and nothing is saved. Close the open copy, or pick a different folder, and try again.

03 Getting a clean printout

This is the part that catches people out, so it is worth being blunt about it: Gantt Excel does not set up your page. It never sets a print area, an orientation or a fit-to-page. The PDF export deliberately honours whatever page setup is already on the sheet, which means the page setup is yours to get right — on Excel’s own Page Layout tab, exactly as for any other worksheet.

What lands on the page = your print area × the current timeline window

The second half of that is the one nobody expects. A Gantt chart sheet only holds timeline columns for the window it is currently showing — dates outside that window are not columns on the sheet at all, so they cannot appear in an export. Set the window before you export, not after.

Gantt Excel → Views and Timeline → Show Full Timeline. This spans the timeline from the earliest task start to the latest finish, so every bar is on the sheet. If the span is very wide it asks first — Fitting the whole project will build 3,400 timeline columns, which may take a while and can make scrolling slow. Continue?

Switch to a coarser view if the result is enormous. A twelve-month refit is unreadable at daily zoom and perfect at weekly or monthly — More Views is where you change it. See Views, timeline & zoom.

Hide the grid columns nobody else needs — Work, the three cost columns, Notes — by right-clicking the column headers and choosing Hide. They stay hidden in the PDF, and unhiding them afterwards costs one click.

On Excel’s Page Layout tab set Orientation to Landscape, then Print Titles → Rows to repeat at top so the timeline header prints on every page. Under Scale to Fit, Width: 1 page keeps the whole chart to one page across.

Select the block you actually want and use Print Area → Set Print Area. Check it with Ctrl+P, then export — the PDF and the print preview are the same thing.

Check it in Excel’s own print preview — the PDF is the same page, saved instead of printed.

04 Exporting to XLSX — what travels, what doesn’t

Gantt Excel → Export → Export to XLSX asks you for a folder, then builds the file name itself from your workbook’s name and the timestamp — something like Export – Kitchen Plan.xlsm 11-Aug-26-143001.xlsx. There is no chance to rename it during the export on either platform; rename it afterwards if the name matters.

What it does next is a straight worksheet copy, so far more comes across than you might expect:

What	In the exported file?	Why
The task grid, every column and every value	Kept	The whole sheet is copied, cell for cell.
The Gantt bars, milestones and dependency lines	Kept	They are drawn onto the sheet, so they copy with it.
Colours, row heights, column widths, hidden columns	Kept	Formatting travels with a sheet copy.
Your project’s settings and its resource list	Kept	Copied in as two very hidden sheets, so the chart still looks right.
Licence key, your name, e-mail and activation date	Cleared	Wiped from the copy before it is saved — see the warning below.
Anything that made the chart behave	Gone	An .xlsx holds no macros. Nothing recalculates.
Buttons drawn on the chart	Inert	Their macros are stripped, so they still look clickable and do nothing.
Your WBS numbering, exactly as written	Kept	The column stays text in the copy, so a code like 1.10 arrives as 1.10 and not as the number 1.1.
A blank Sheet1 at the front of the file	Removed	Excel creates a starter sheet for any new workbook. The export deletes it once the chart is copied in, so the file opens on your chart.

Two smaller things happen on the way out, both deliberate. The WBS column stays text in the exported copy, exactly as it is on your chart — that is what keeps a code like 1.10 reading as 1.10 rather than being taken for the number 1.1, which would put the tenth child of a task under the first child’s number. Excel’s green “number stored as text” triangles are switched off for those cells, and that setting travels inside the file, so whoever opens the export does not see them either. Its indent is put back straight afterwards, so the column still lines up with the rest of the grid. The second thing is a stamp written into the Task column one row below the last task: Exported from Gantt Excel on 11-Aug-26 14:30:01. That line is your evidence of when the snapshot was taken, so leave it there.

When the file is written you are told where it went and asked Do you want to open the file?. On Windows Yes opens the file; on Mac it opens the exported workbook in Excel.

The exported workbook keeps the chart. What it doesn’t keep is the Gantt Excel tab — the ribbon here is Excel’s own, and the export stamp under the last task records when the snapshot was taken.

05 Exporting every project at once

The ribbon’s Export to XLSX exports one chart — the one you are standing on. To get every chart in the workbook into a single file, open Settings and use Export All Projects.

It works the same way, but loops every Gantt chart in the workbook and copies each one’s sheet, settings and resources into the same new file. Before it starts it warns you: This will take 30 seconds or less depending on the project data. Please DO NOT close this file until you see a confirmation message. Take that literally — let it finish.

Both routes finish with the same confirmation, headed Export Complete and reading Export Complete – The file has been saved to followed by the full path, then Do you want to open the file? Answer Yes and the exported workbook itself opens — not the folder it was written to, so if you wanted the folder, copy the path off that message before you dismiss it.

06 Mac, Windows and the small print

The exports themselves are identical on both platforms. What differs is the file dialog, because Excel for Mac cannot show the Save-As dialog the Windows build uses.

	Windows	Mac
Export to PDF asks for	Folder and file name, in a Save dialog	Folder only — the file name is built for you
Export to XLSX asks for	Folder only	Folder only
Opening the file afterwards	Opens it in its usual application	A PDF opens through the system, and if macOS refuses you are given the full path instead; an exported .xlsx opens in Excel

Two more things worth knowing. The PDF export does not suspend screen updating, so you will see Excel repaint while it works — that is normal and not a sign of trouble. And the exported .xlsx is a genuine, plain workbook: the recipient needs no add-in, no macro warning and no licence of their own to open it.

07 Common questions

My PDF is missing the last few weeks of the project. Why?

The timeline window stops before those tasks do. A chart sheet only holds columns for the dates its timeline currently spans, so anything past the window has nowhere to be drawn — and the export can only save what is on the sheet. Run Gantt Excel → Views and Timeline → Show Full Timeline, check the bars are all visible, then export again.

The PDF runs to fifteen pages. How do I get it onto one?

Set the page up on Excel’s own Page Layout tab — Gantt Excel doesn’t touch it. Landscape, Scale to Fit → Width: 1 page, and a Print Area around just the grid and timeline you want will do it. Then switch to a coarser view (weekly or monthly) so the timeline needs fewer columns in the first place. Check with Ctrl+P before exporting — the preview and the PDF are the same page.

Can the person I send the XLSX to edit the plan?

They can type in it, but nothing will follow their typing. The exported workbook has no macros, so changing a date won’t recalculate an end date, move a dependent task or redraw a bar. It is a snapshot for reading. If they need to re-plan, they need Gantt Excel and the real workbook.

Does the exported file contain my licence key?

No. Both Export to XLSX and Export All Projects clear the licence value, your name, e-mail and activation date from the copy before saving it, so neither kind of exported file carries your licence.

Where did the Gantt Excel tab go in my exported file?

It was never in there. The ribbon tab belongs to the Gantt Excel workbook, not to your chart, and an .xlsx cannot carry it. Buttons drawn on the chart itself do come across, but their macros are deliberately removed — so they look clickable and do nothing. Open your original workbook to keep working on the plan.

Does exporting change my chart?

Not the plan. Neither export touches a task, a date, a bar or a setting — both write a new file and leave your data alone. Two small side effects are worth knowing about, though.

Export to XLSX makes every sheet in the workbook visible for a moment while it copies, and afterwards puts back only Gantt Excel’s own support sheets. So if you had hidden a chart sheet or a worksheet of your own, you will find it showing again — hide it again and carry on.

Export to PDF blanks one cell in the chart’s header band as it finishes, including when you cancel. Nothing you can see changes, but it is enough for Excel to count the workbook as edited, which is why Excel may ask whether you want to save when you close it. Saying yes is harmless.