Exporting to PDF and Excel

1. Set the plan up the way you want it to look: the zoom, the columns, any filters, and which phases are folded.

2. Click Export on the ribbon and choose Export to PDF… or Export to Excel…. Both are in the File menu too, and Ctrl+P goes straight to Export to PDF. (On the dashboard or the team calendar, these export that page instead – see below.)

3. In the box that opens, choose what goes in and, for a PDF, the paper it goes on (see below), then click Export….

4. Choose where to save the file and click Save.

5. When the file is ready, Desktop Plan tells you where it saved it and asks whether to open it. Click Open to see it in your PDF reader or in Excel, or Cancel to carry on.

Both exports open the same box, and it remembers your choices for next time, apart from the timescale, the dates and the columns:

• Timescale (Excel only). A PDF always uses the zoom you have on screen: in Day view you get Day, in Quarter view you get Quarter. To print at another zoom, close the box, change the zoom, and export again. For Excel, Automatic keeps the zoom you have on screen, and moves to a coarser zoom only if the timeline would need more columns than a worksheet has. You can also pick Day, Week, Month, Quarter or Year yourself, for this export: the box starts on Automatic again next time.
• Dates. The whole plan, or just the dates you type in From and To. Leave one of them empty to run to that end of the plan. The dates start as the whole plan each time. If a date can’t be read, or the dates run backwards, the box says so and Export stays greyed until you fix them.
• Columns. Left alone, the export has the columns your plan shows, in the same order: the line reads As in the plan. Click it to see the list. Untick a column to leave it out, or tick one under Hidden in the plan, a custom column for example, to put it in. It goes after the others. The task name always goes in. Fewer columns leave more room for the chart, so a PDF prints bigger. Your plan itself doesn’t change, and the next export starts from what the plan shows again.
• Paper (PDF only). A4, A3, Letter, Legal or Tabloid, Landscape or Portrait, and either:
• Fit to one page wide: the whole width shrunk onto one page across, with the rows running on down as many pages as they need; or

• Actual size, across several pages: printed full size, the timeline running on across further pages. The columns up to the task name are repeated on each page, so you can tape the pages together side by side. If those columns would take more than a third of the page, they aren’t repeated: untick some, or choose Landscape.

  A workbook has no paper settings. It prints landscape, one page wide, on the paper your Windows region uses, usually Letter or A4. Change that in Excel’s Page Setup if you need to.

• Show "Made with Desktop Plan". Ticked to start with. Untick it to leave the Desktop Plan name and logo out of the export. The box remembers your choice.

The line at the bottom of the box tells you what you’ll get. For a PDF, that is how many pages, which timescale and how big the text will print. If it warns that the text will be very small, do what it suggests: Landscape, A3, fewer columns, fewer dates, a coarser zoom in the plan, or Actual size. With Actual size, it warns when the chart runs more than four pages across. For Excel, it is the timescale and how many columns the timeline takes. Excel has a limit on columns: past it, Export is greyed and the line asks for a coarser timescale or fewer dates.

A PDF has the plan’s name, its dates and the export date at the top of every page. At the foot are the export date, Made with Desktop Plan with its logo, and the page number. To print the plan, export a PDF and print that.

While the dashboard or the team calendar is on screen, Export on the ribbon makes a PDF of that page, just as you see it – there is no Excel version of a page. A small box asks for the paper and which way round, and whether to show Made with Desktop Plan. For the team calendar you can also choose Actual size, across several pages (easy to read, more pages) or Fit to one page wide; the box says how many pages that comes to. A long plan at Days makes many pages across: choose Weeks on the page first for fewer. The team calendar’s box starts at Actual size every time. Paper, which way round and Made with Desktop Plan are the same choices as the plan’s own PDF box: change them in one and the other remembers them too. The file is suggested as the plan’s name followed by – Dashboard or – Team calendar.

The PDF is what the page shows: the dashboard with the same projects, charts and tables; the team calendar with your Bars or Hours, Days or Weeks, and the role and group you picked – over every week, not only the ones scrolled into view. Both print on white paper, even in Dark mode, with the same footer as a plan’s PDF. On portrait paper the team calendar cuts very long names short; choose landscape to keep them whole.

File › Export to PDF and Ctrl+P do the same as the ribbon’s Export while a page is on screen, and the page stays up.

To export the plan itself, press Esc to go back to it first. File › Export to Excel always exports the plan, and takes you back to it.

The workbook shows the plan as you see it on screen, for the dates, timescale and columns you chose in the box: the task list, and the Gantt chart with the bars, milestones, progress, dependency arrows, labels and colours. Folded tasks are left out, and hidden columns too unless you tick them in the box.

The workbook is for reading and sharing. Changes made in Excel stay in Excel; they never come back into your plan. The workbook says so at the top, beside the date and time it was exported, and the same date and time is printed at the foot of every page. Made with Desktop Plan and its logo sit under the last task.

If the workbook is open in Excel, close it before exporting over it.