Export Shapes

GcExcel .NET provides extensive support for loading, saving, printing and exporting Excel files comprising shapes and other drawing objects embedded in the worksheets.

The IsPrintable property of the IShape interface can be used to get or set whether the object will be printed in the PDF document. By default, this value is TRUE and hence the shapes embedded in the Excel files are printed. In case you do not want to export shapes to the PDF files, this value must be set to FALSE.

The Export Shapes to PDF feature allows users to print and export different types of shapes such as callouts, lines, rectangles, basic shapes, block arrows, flowcharts, equation shapes, stars and banners etc. This feature is useful especially when the following scenarios are encountered while working with spreadsheets:

• When users have Excel files with graphs, reports and dashboards containing various shapes that they want to export to a PDF file.

• With the help of this feature, users can export spreadsheets that contain preset shapes, basic shapes, custom shapes and grouped shapes with different operations like rotation, flipping, connector arrows and text etc. into a PDF file.

• When users need to export Excel template files and spreadsheets containing shapes with different types of fills (like Solid fill, Gradient fill etc.) while saving to a PDF file.

Using Code

Refer to the following example code in order to export shapes to PDF.

// Initialize workbook
Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
        
// Fetch default worksheet 
IWorksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets[0];

// Adding Shapes
IShape ShapeBegin = worksheet.Shapes.AddShape(AutoShapeType.CloudCallout, 1, 1, 100, 100);
IShape EndBegin = worksheet.Shapes.AddShape(AutoShapeType.Wave, 200, 200, 100, 100);
        
// Adding Connector Shape
IShape ConnectorShape = worksheet.Shapes.AddConnector(ConnectorType.Straight, 1, 1, 101, 101);

// Connect shapes by connector shape
ConnectorShape.ConnectorFormat.BeginConnect(ShapeBegin, 3);
ConnectorShape.ConnectorFormat.EndConnect(EndBegin, 0);

// Get second shape in current worksheet(here it's a connector shape) and do not print it(default value is true)
worksheet.Shapes[2].IsPrintable = false;

// Saving workbook to PDF
workbook.Save(@"ExportingShapesToPDF.pdf", SaveFileFormat.Pdf);

Note: While exporting Excel files containing shapes into the PDF format, some of the exported shapes including the shapes with rectangular gradient fill and path gradient fill; shapes with multiple lines and gradient lines; shape effects like text distribution etc. may not look exactly the same as in Excel.