Images blurry when saving PDF from Excel

Question

If I insert images into Excel, then save the worksheet as a PDF, the images become extremely blurry and jagged, even worse than the "lowest" JPG setting in Photoshop. It's so bad that the image is barely recognizable.

Is it because Excel is automatically compressing all images? Or some setting with exporting PDFs? I do not have Acrobat on this work computer.

Solution 1

Since I came here via Google and the answer to this question didn't help me I found a solution that works for me. The printing quality depends on several factors. One factor is the standard quality of the document itself. In newer Excel Versions (in my case Office 365), the default quality can be set to high in the options.

File-->Options-->Advanced

The relevant options are under the sections Image Size and Quality as well as Printing. For best results, the default resolution has to be set to High Fidelity.

The second factor that can decrease the image quality is a PDF printer with a low quality. With the standard Microsoft print to PDF printer, the quality can be set inside the print dialog under the Page Setup options. (If you accidentialy or intentionally removed the Microsoft print to PDF printer, here is a tip on how to get it back.)

The third factor is a wrongly scaled image. To avoid multiple conversion steps, I scale my images according to the print resolution. Although I don't fully understand the inner workings of the print to pdf function, this three things help me to get a decent image quality when the quality of the input images is good enough.

Solution 2

In Excel's 'Save-As' dialog, you can chose the resolution used for PDF (bottom left, 'Tools/Compress Pictures'):

Check what your current setting is, it might be set to Email or so.

Also, not that if your picture is very small while in the Excel Sheet (because you plan to click into it to really use it), excel might just think that small size is all you need. Make sure you drag it large enough to represent the size you really want.

Comments

[Heartcloud]

Compress pictures settings is already set to highest (print: 220dpi). The icon is sized to fit cells, I can't make them any bigger. They're pretty big already, at least 100x100.

[Aganju]

did you try 'Use Document Resolution'? I would understand that as 'leave it as it is'

[Heartcloud]

Yeah I tried all 4 compression settings, they seem to make no difference at all. If I insert an image then make it smaller, it seems it turns out even worse. If I just leave the image at its original size then it becomes very blurry still, but slightly less jagged.