CrazySmartPDF vs Total Excel Converter (CoolUtils)

Short answer: Total Excel Converter and CrazySmartPDF both batch a folder of workbooks into PDFs, and they take opposite routes to get there. Total Excel Converter reads the spreadsheet with its own parser, which means it needs no Microsoft Excel at all and runs happily on a server or from a scheduled command line. CrazySmartPDF drives your installed Excel for fidelity and then re-lays-out each sheet, so rows stay whole and wide tables stay readable. If the machine has no Excel, CoolUtils wins and there is nothing to argue about. If it does, the layout pass is the difference you can see on the page.

The one real difference: whose renderer draws the page

Total Excel Converter is a self-contained converter. Its own engine reads the .xls or .xlsx and draws the PDF, which is what makes it independent of Office — genuinely useful on a headless server, and the reason it turns up under command-line queries. The trade is that its output is its interpretation of your workbook rather than Excel’s. Fonts, number formats, conditional formatting and pivot layouts can land slightly differently from what you see on screen.

CrazySmartPDF goes the other way. Cover and pivot sheets export through your installed Excel, carrying the workbook’s real styling — logo, borders, number formats, colours — while the engine re-lays-out the data sheets: no row split across a page break, and a table too wide for the paper resized to a readable floor or sliced across pages with the label column repeated, instead of crushed or cut off. That fidelity is exactly why it needs Excel on the machine, which is also its hard limit.

A readable close-up of the same seven invoice rows in two PDFs at true paper scale: the built-in export's table stops after the Region column, while the layout-pass output carries the row through to Status. — **What "re-lays-out the sheet" means, close up.** The same seven invoice rows in both PDFs at true paper scale. On the left, the as-is render: the row runs out of paper after *Region* and the rest of it is printed on a separate strip of pages. On the right, the same rows after a layout pass — the whole row, including every money column, on one page and still readable. A converter with its own parser produces the left-hand shape too; the difference is not the parser, it is whether anything re-computes the pagination.Sample workbook: 23 columns × 210 rows, synthetic — every company, person and figure in it was invented for the capture. Column and page counts read back out of the two real PDFs. Tap to open full size.

Where Total Excel Converter is the better call

No Excel on the machine. A server, a locked-down build agent, a machine without an Office license. CrazySmartPDF’s native apps simply cannot run there.
Scheduled server-side conversion. Its command-line interface is built for being called by a script or a job runner, unattended, on a box nobody logs into.
Formats beyond Excel. It converts a wider spread of source and target formats than a dedicated Excel-to-PDF tool needs to.

Where CrazySmartPDF is built to be different

A layout pass, not a render. Rows stay whole; wide tables are kept readable rather than clipped at the paper edge.
Your Excel draws the styled pages. Cover and pivot sheets go through the copy of Excel you already trust, so they look like your workbook.
It checks its own output. After rendering, each file is scanned for blank and clipped pages and the suspects are flagged for review. It flags them; it does not rewrite your workbook.
Free to start. The desktop app batches a folder of up to five files per run at no cost, with a one-time $39 for larger runs and no subscription. Total Excel Converter is paid software with a trial.

Side by side

	Total Excel Converter	CrazySmartPDF
Needs Excel installed	No — own parser	Yes: Windows + Excel 2016+ (native apps)
Runs on a headless server	Yes	No
Layout	Renders the sheet as its parser reads it	Re-computes: rows whole, wide tables kept readable
Styling fidelity	Its own engine’s interpretation	Cover and pivot pages through your installed Excel
Batch	Yes, GUI and command line	Yes, whole folder in one pass with a run log
Output check	None	Flags blank and clipped pages for review
Cost	Paid, trial available	Free on your files; one-time $39 beyond 5 files per run

Which should you use?

Use Total Excel Converter if the conversion has to happen where Excel is not installed, or has to be driven by a scheduler on a server.
Use CrazySmartPDF if you are on a Windows machine with Excel and the problem is how the PDFs come out — split rows, clipped columns, a wide sheet nobody can read.

CrazySmartPDF is free to run on your own files. See how it works, or read the honest rundown of the command-line routes if scripting is what you are really after.

FAQ

Does Total Excel Converter fix split rows and clipped columns? No. It renders the sheet as its own parser reads it, so a row that does not fit the page is handled the way its engine paginates, not re-flowed. Keeping rows whole and wide tables readable takes a layout pass that re-computes the page.

Can CrazySmartPDF run on a server without Excel? No, and this is the honest reason to choose the other tool. The native add-in and desktop app need Windows with Excel 2016+ because they drive Excel for styled pages. The free web converter handles a single file in a browser with no Excel, but it is not a server-side batch route.

Which one is cheaper? CrazySmartPDF is free for runs of up to five files and a one-time $39 for larger batches, with no recurring fee. Total Excel Converter is paid, with a trial. Cost is rarely the deciding factor here — whether the machine has Excel is.