A portable document file format lets you create a representation of “electronic paper” that displays your data on the screen as it would look when printed. One of the benefits of portable document formats is that you can share documents you do not want others to modify. Both the Microsoft XPS format and Adobe PDF files require free software for viewing, and they promise cross-platform consistency and format compatibility regardless of the software and fonts available on your computer.

The two available portable document formats, PDF and XPS, provide portability, allow you to search a file’s content, and let you preview the files in applications that support them, such as Windows Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader. Worksheets you save in XPS format are also viewable using a stand-alone XPS viewer, which may be necessary if you are running Windows XP. Adobe’s PDF, the format that gave birth (and an acronym) to the term “portable document format,” has the advantage of being ubiquitous.

To save a file in either format, click the File tab, click Save & Send, click Create PDF/XPS Document in the Save & Send list, and then click the Create PDF/XPS button that appears on the right side of the window, as shown in Figure 11-17. When you do, the Publish As PDF Or XPS dialog box appears, displaying two self-explanatory Optimize For options—Standard and Minimum Size—at the bottom of the dialog box, as shown in Figure 11-18. The Open File After Publishing check box causes the resulting file to open as soon as Excel finishes saving it; the file opens in Adobe Reader (PDF) or in your Web browser (XPS).

Click the Options button to display the dialog box also shown in Figure 11-18, where you can specify what to publish, including a specific page range, only the selected cells, the active table, or the entire workbook. The nonprinting information options allow you to specify whether to include document properties and “structure tags,” which are alternative text tags containing explanations of what each item does that are attached for accessibility purposes to visible structural elements of the document.

If you save an entire multisheet workbook in XPS or PDF format, the resulting document displays each sheet as a separate image on a single page—scroll down to see them all.

Figure 11-17. Use the Save & Send screen in Backstage view to create PDF or XPS documents.

Figure 11-18. The Publish As PDF Or XPS dialog box offers options specific to these file types.