How to share an Excel spreadsheet as a link

Spreadsheets are the hardest office file to share well. The live file exposes your formulas and lets people change numbers. A screenshot is unreadable. A PDF export often comes out as forty pages of three columns each. Here is how to do it properly, for each of the common situations.

If people need to edit: OneDrive or Google Sheets

Save the workbook to OneDrive and use Share > Copy link in Excel with Can edit, or upload it to Google Drive and share the Google Sheets version. Both support real-time co-editing.

This is the right answer for budgets your team maintains together. It's the wrong answer for anything you send to a customer, because they see your formulas, your hidden sheets, and every tab you forgot to delete.

If people only need to read it: share a rendered link

Upload the .xlsx to the Excel to link page. PDF Deck renders the workbook to pages and gives you a link. Readers see values, not formulas. They can't change anything, and they don't need Excel or an account.

You also get view tracking, an optional password for confidential numbers such as a price list, and a link that stays the same when you upload next month's version.

Make the rendered version readable

A rendered spreadsheet paginates the way Excel prints, so spend two minutes on the print setup before you upload. This is the step everyone skips.

1. Set the print area. Select the cells that matter, then Page Layout > Print Area > Set Print Area. Everything else is left out.
2. Fit to width. In Page Layout > Page Setup, set scaling to Fit to 1 page wide and leave the height automatic. Wide tables become landscape pages instead of being sliced into columns.
3. Choose landscape for anything wider than about eight columns.
4. Repeat header rows. Under Print Titles, set Rows to repeat at top so every page has column headings.
5. Hide sheets you don't want shared, or better, delete them from a copy. Hidden sheets are excluded from rendering, but deleting is safer.
6. Check Print Preview. What you see there is what the reader will see.

Sharing a price list or rate card

This is the most common reason people search for how to share a spreadsheet as a link. The pattern that works: one document per customer tier, each with its own password, all in one dashboard. When prices change, upload the new file and every link you've sent shows the new prices. Read more on sharing a price list as a link.

Quick comparison

What doesn't carry over

A rendered link is a picture of the values. Filters, sorting, pivot-table drill-down, and cell comments don't work in it. If your reader needs to interact with the data, send the live file to the people who should have it and a rendered link to everyone else.