Hi OutSystems Community,
I have an Excel template that I use to pre-populate data from my web form, and users can export the data to Excel with the formatting intact. Now, I need to export this same data to PDF, but I want to preserve the Excel formatting exactly as it is.
So far, I haven’t found a straightforward way to convert the Excel file directly to PDF within OutSystems. I’m looking for solutions or best practices on:
How to convert an existing Excel file to PDF while keeping all the formatting.
Any available OutSystems components, integrations, or external APIs that can help.
Preferably a free solution with no trial limits or usage restrictions.
Workarounds if direct conversion is not possible inside OutSystems.
Thanks in advance for any guidance or suggestions!
Hi @Lucas Gan,
We have a Forge component available that converts Excel files to PDF. I'm not entirely sure how well it aligns with your specific requirements, but I believe it might be useful for your use case.
Please refer to the link below for more details:
ExcelToPDF
Hi @Lucas Gan ,
If you are looking for a free solution you can try LibreOffice . After some research, it does preserve the formatting.
Hi Lucas,
Are you using any rich-text editor eg. CK editor, TinyMCE in your screen, for your users to format the data?
If so, when saving into DB, the data will be saved with the anchor tags eg. <b>my data</b> etc
In order to view it, you need to use back CK editor/TinyMCE to view it on your screen
So what you are asking, if when the user retrieve and view it on screen, the download will happen on screen, or there is a admin page or something, with a button 'Download', then the download will happen back-end.
Thank you.