There is an issue when I export an .xls file to PDF. If Excel is not installed on the client computer everything is wider - meaning some of the columns are rendered as a new page
This has been tested on
Windows XP without Excel installed: rendered differently
Windows XP with Excel installed: rendered correctly
Windows 7 with Excel installed: rendered correctly
I have not changed any settings for the FlexcelPdfExport class and the .xls file has nothing more than some text (far to the right to see the issue) and a chart on the second page.
How can I get the PDF files to be rendered the same on Windows XP without Excel installed?
We don't use Excel at all, so this isn't related to having Excel installed or not. It most likely has to do with the fonts on your system.
Excel 2007/2010 have changed the default font from Arial to Calibri, and Calibri is not a standard font and it might not be installed. Probably when you install Excel in XP, you get Calibri installed, and so FlexCelPdfExport can use it to render the file exactly as it should. If you don't have the font, windows will replace it with something else (probably Arial) which is wider and will fit less text, causing the columns to overflow into a new page.
In short, make sure that you have all the needed fonts in the "Font" folder. Also you can use the "FlexCelTrace" class to find out if some font isn't found, and notify the user. Please take a look at "Fonts and Excel 2007" in "UsingFlexCelPdfExport.pdf" doc, especially the section "Problem 1: Missing Fonts". It shows the problem with not having Calibri installed.
Well, this is of course my guess, I can never be 100% sure. So let me know if this fixes your problem.
I followed the instructions in the UsingFlexcelPdfExport.pdf regarding setting the default font in the "Normal" style and that solved it perfectly. Had to make sure that the Chart also was set to Arial because I noticed that it still had Calibri as default.