Exporting
Video: Export a report to Word, Excel and PDF
A calculated sheet leaves the page in four ways: a PDF through the print dialog, a Word document, an Excel workbook and standalone HTML. All of them are built in the page, from the same calculated report, so what you see is what you export. The Word and Excel writers load the first time you use them and work offline.
The Document tab has buttons for Print PDF, Word, Excel and Export…. The File menu has Print PDF…, Export… and Export Excel…. The Export dialog lists the views you can export (Report, Preview, Input form, Unwrapped), each with its own Save PDF, Save Word (not offered for the input form and the unwrapped listing) and Save HTML buttons, and a Plots list that downloads each plot as an image, or all of them as a ZIP.
Which view to export: Report is the usual choice. It applies the values entered in an input form,
hides #pre text and shows #post text. Preview shows what the results pane shows.
Page breaks
To start a new page at a point in the report, put a page break line there:
# Loads
w: 12 kN/m | design load
<div style="page-break-after:always"></div>
# Bending
L: 6 m
M: w * L^2 / 8 -> kN*m
Print PDF and Word both start “Bending” on a new page. You do not need to type the line:
- In a sheet, the + between two blocks has Page break at the end of its menu.
- The ribbon has Page break on the Document tab (Page group) and the Text Formatting tab. It inserts the line at the cursor.
The preview draws the break as a dashed line labelled “Page break”. The line is not printed and is
not in the Word file. A Calcpad worksheet (.cpd) writes the same thing as an HTML comment line,
'<div style="page-break-after:always"></div>, and the ribbon button inserts that form there.
Word also honours the other ways HTML forces a break on an element (page-break-before: always,
break-before: page, break-after: page). Excel has no pages, so the workbook ignores page breaks.
Page view
To see where the pages of a long report break without printing it, choose Pages in the results bar (Preview and Report). The results are laid out on sheets of the PDF’s paper size, with its margins drawn as a faint dashed box, a label “Page 2 of 5” on each sheet and the manual page breaks honoured. The page is the one the PDF settings describe (Settings, Export tab, or the document’s own PDF settings), so changing the paper size, the orientation or a margin changes the view at once. The sheets are always drawn in the light theme, as they print. On a narrow window the sheet is scaled to fit. The choice is kept.
A block that would run over the bottom margin moves to the top of the next page, a heading stays with the line after it, and a block taller than a page is left to run on. The browser keeps long paragraphs and tables in one piece less often than this does, so on the last line or two of a page the print dialog’s own preview has the last word. The view is on screen only: nothing about it is printed or exported.
Word
Word writes a .docx of the report:
- Equations are real Word equations (Office Math): fractions, subscripts, sums, matrices, units. In a test sheet with a handful of formulas the document held 21 equations.
- Headings, paragraphs, lists, links and tables keep their form. A Markdown pipe table gets rules.
- Plots and other drawings are pictures. A plot is stored as a PNG (the SVG is kept beside it, for versions of Word that read SVG).
- Pictures from the library are embedded.
- A formula typeset with LaTeX in a sheet appears as its TeX source in italics, not as a Word equation.
- An interactive Plotly chart cannot be carried. A paragraph stands where it was. A matplotlib figure from a Python block is carried as a picture.
The Word document has been checked in LibreOffice, not in Microsoft Word.
Excel
Excel writes a workbook that mirrors the calculation:
| Sheet | Holds |
|---|---|
| Report | The report in document order. Headings and text in merged cells; every equation a row with its description, name, expression, expression with the numbers put in, value and unit. Text tables are cell ranges. |
| Variables | Every variable in the order it was first assigned, with its last value and unit. |
| One sheet for each vector or matrix | Its elements, a row per row, with the unit. A variable’s row on Variables links to it. |
| Inputs | The variables set by input fields and #UI controls. |
| Plot data | The points of every plot, two columns per curve. |
A plot line or $Plot becomes a native Excel XY chart on the Report sheet at the place of the
plot, with its series pointing at the Plot data sheet, so you can edit the data and the chart redraws.
For a test sheet with one plot line the workbook held one chart and these sheets: Report,
Variables, K, F, u, Inputs and Plot data (K, F and u being a matrix and two vectors).
What the chart loses against the drawing: the faint fill under a curve, the exact fonts and grid style. Colour maps and other drawings are pictures. The cells hold calculated values with the expressions as text, not live Excel formulas.
The workbook opens in LibreOffice and a Python reader. It has not been tried in Microsoft Excel.
Print PDF opens the browser’s print dialog on the report. Choose “Save as PDF” as the destination. The page size, orientation and margins come from the PDF settings (Settings, Export tab; Document > Header and footer opens it there). Until you choose a paper size there, it follows the browser’s language: Letter in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica, and A4 everywhere else. A size you have chosen is kept. The printed page carries the browser’s own header and footer in place of title, date and page numbers; turn “Headers and footers” off in the print dialog if you do not want them.
The printed page is the report: the buttons under plots are not printed, and an interactive chart is printed as a still picture of it (draw the chart on the page first; one that was never drawn is replaced by a note).
HTML
Save HTML writes a standalone page with the report, its styles, fonts and pictures. An exported input form is static: it shows the controls, but nothing recalculates behind them.
Files a worksheet writes
#write and #append save matrices to files. The browser keeps the file in the library and
downloads it when its content changes. By default this happens when you make a report; the Export
dialog’s Write files choice and Write to Disk button change that.
From the command line
The command-line front end of the engine converts a Calcpad worksheet to HTML, Word or Excel:
Cli input.cpd output.xlsx. It is built from the same code. A sheet has to be compiled first
(Convert to Calcpad, or the sheet compiler), because the command line reads Calcpad.
Related pages: Export to Word, Excel and PDF, Calculations instead of spreadsheets. More pages are in Calculators and guides.